Social Innovation. Blue Growth through Cooperation and Solidarity

Sustainability of the Lower North Shore Solidarity Bio Products Cooperative model has been built on three pillars:

The Social Pillar: People Focus

Building local knowledge and capacity is a critical need for community development within the local region. Instead of looking to the outside for skilled human resources, the Cooperative is working to provide education opportunities for local people. This enables people to learn necessary skills to support development of the bio-economy and to enable local leadership for research, business development and partnership opportunities. One of the key successes was creating a distance master’s program with UQTR in environmental science for two (2) local youth. This master’s program allowed local people to be trained to carry out bio extraction processes for both marine and land based plants. The Cooperative is a membership based model with equal voting rights for each member and allocation of benefits are based on a member’s contribution to the cooperative.