• Dame Pauline Green
• Craig Kielburger
• 2020 vision

Dame Pauline Green

“Half the world’s population is served by some kind of co‑operative,” AGM guest speaker Dame Pauline Green told AGM delegates. “How can something that is so big be invisible to the power structure?” Green, chief executive of Co‑operatives UK and president of ICA Europe, talked about initiatives to convert municipal housing in the UK. “By far the best results in improving housing stock and improving the community was the co‑operative housing model.”

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Craig Kielburger

Craig Kielburger learned about child labour by accident. When he was 12 years old, he was looking for the comics in a newspaper when he saw the headline, “Battled child labour – boy, 12, murdered.”

That was when Kielburger, guest speaker at the CHF Canada AGM, learned that slavery was a reality for many children his age. As he rode his bike to school that day, he told delegates, he desperately thought about what he could do to help them. He asked his Grade 7 class for help.

Today, just over a decade later, those efforts have led to Free the Children, an international network of children helping children. Kielburger talked about how housing co‑ops and their members could help improve the lives of impoverished children and their families.

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2020 vision

By the year 2020, most housing co‑ops will have come to the end of their agreements with government. Co‑ops will be free from government rules but the subsidy for low-income members will end too.

While many co‑ops look forward to that time, they wonder if they are ready. Will they be able to continue to house low-income members? Will they need to renovate their buildings? Will they have enough money to stay strong communities into the future?

Co‑ops have asked CHF Canada to help them answer these questions. The new 2020 Vision project was launched at the AGM. Delegates used an electronic “gizmo” to give instant feedback on some of these questions. CHF Canada will be developing new materials to help housing co‑ops respond to the challenges ahead.