Alternatives works to promote justice and equality amongst individuals and communities worldwide. Active in over 35 countries, Alternatives supports local, community-based initiatives working towards the greater economic, social, and political rights of people and communities affected by poverty, discrimination, exploitation, and violence.
The organization publishes the Le Journal des Alternatives newsletter, a publication inserted every three months in Montreal's French paper Le Voir. Alternatives also publishes the Alternatives International Journal, a monthly publication in English distributed electronically.
Alternatives Montreal is the headquarters of an International Federation consisting of nine NGOs spread across the world. Alternative-Niger, Alternatives Asia (New Delhi), Alternative Information Center (Jerusalem), Forum Macrocain des Alternatives Sud, Initiative Pour un Autre Monde, Institut Alternatives Terrazul, Khanya College, and Teacher Creativity Center.
Vision
Alternatives knows that, through the development of sustainable societies, another world is possible. This belief is grounded in the engagement, experience, and values of Alternatives' members and the social movements to which they belong.
• In this world, women, men and children will live in dignity and respect, and will equitably share the power and resources they need to live and thrive.
• In this world, the diversity of peoples and persons will be respected, as will the human, civil, economic, social, and cultural rights of all of its inhabitants.
• In this world, solidarity, cooperation, respect for the environment, participatory democracy, and peace will be the pillars that hold it aloft.
• In this world, founded upon sustainable, just, and democratic social and economic development, construction has already begun at a local, national, and global level.
Mission statement
Alternatives' mission statement (2009) reads: "Strengthened by our vision and national and international experience, Alternatives is an organization that works for solidarity, justice, and equity the world over. Alternatives' aim is to help the networking, building, and promoting of innovative initiatives in popular and social movements that are fighting for economic, social, political, cultural and environmental rights."
The organization says that it wants to "strengthen citizen action and reinforce the contribution of social movements in the construction of sustainable societies."
Alternatives Montreal is the headquarters of a federation consisting of nine NGOs spread across the world. Alternative-Niger, Alternatives Asia (New Delhi), Alternative Information Center (Jerusalem), Forum Macrocain des Alternatives Sud, Initiative Pour un Autre Monde, Institut Alternatives Terrazul, Khanya College, and Teacher Creativity Center.
In each of these regions, the organisation works in direct partnership with groups of women and men who are struggling for progress, respect and justice; as well as the peace and sustainable development of their community, their environment, and their region.
Alternatives supports network creation between groups so that they can benefit from their shared experiences and successes. Network formation is crucial since it allows for a deepened analysis and comprehension of the conflicts affecting their communities from the outside.
Alternatives' and its partners' international solidarity projects are centered upon:
Civil, political, economic, social and human rights
The fight against poverty
Women's rights, equality between genders, the inclusion of women in all spheres of society
Education and inclusion of youth
Civil society development, management, and autonomy
Freedom of organization, of information, of the press, and of religion
Criticism
Alternatives has been criticised as a political organisation supporting "left-leaning causes" through taxpayer funds, provided by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). The Conservative government noted that the Alternatives' board includes "supporters of Hezbollah and Hamas, such as Ali Mallah, vice-president of the Canadian Arab Federation." In addition, the government was reported to have been concerned regarding a 2008 "education camp" at Saint-Alphonse de Rodriguez in Quebec, was attended by "500 motivated militants" from Lebanon, Iraq, and Venezuela.[1]
Youth Internship Programs
Alternatives organizes overseas youth internship programs (such as Alternatives' NetCorps program), with the aim of developing a sense of solidarity and curiosity about other regions within youth. These internships emphasize understanding Third World realities and encouraging actions that will advance Alternatives' message of justice. Thanks to the internships, hundreds of young people have had the opportunity to participate in uncommon professional, cultural, and human experiences.
Alternatives' Internships Program for 2009-2010 offers internships funded by the Québec Sans Frontières Program of Québec's Ministère des relations internationales.
The 2009-2010 Program offered 4 types of internships, under the following 3 themes:
Communications et journalism: Bolivia: Andale! An environmental voice for workers in Bolivia]
Ecuador: Documentaries for the rights of youth and children in Ecuador
Environment and urban agriculture: Mali: Roots around the world: urban agriculture in Bamako
Information and Communication Technologies: Cameroon: When communities take the information highway: education in Yaoundé
Also, one position of the OCI program of Québec Sans Fronitères was available at Alternatives' offices in Montreal:
Community sector management and institutional development: Assistant to the Québec sans frontières (QSF) program: from Africa to the Americas
As part of the Youth Eco Internship program of YMCA of Canada, Alternatives offered 2 internship positions in Montreal:
Environment and urban agriculture: Assistant to the environment and urban agriculture program
Urban agriculture mobilization and education officer
Alternatives in Quebec and Canada
Alternatives is an organization that produces and participates in many conferences, that publishes a newspaper and several Web sites, and that organizes educational and informational activities.
The Alternatives newspaper, a monthly compendium of international, national, and cultural news, has a distribution of 50,000, creating a window of alternative information on the world.
Whether in Quebec, Canada, or the world, Alternatives works to raise public awareness of international and local policy debates and keep people informed of the links between them. Through its information and educational campaigns, reflecting our concerns with equality and justice for the South, Alternatives goes beyond the general public to reach policymakers.[citation needed] At the local level, our work involves environmental concerns, participatory democracy, out-reach and solidarity programs with immigrant communities and the promotion of pro-social policies.
For the last 16 years, Alternatives has been hosting the Journées Alternatives, a three-day retreat with Alternatives volunteers at Camp Papillon de St-Alphonse de Rodriguez. The retreat promotes reflection, engagement and education and has hundreds of participants yearly.
Alternatives' Rooftop Gardens Project in Montreal
Since 2003, Alternatives has funded and promoted promotes a Rooftop Garden Project, which has been exploring new ways to interact with urban man-made environment and the food cycle, for a greener city and healthier communities. The Rooftop Garden Project is a combination of hydroponic cultivation, permaculture, organic agriculture and collective gardening. It has inspired numerous initiatives in Québec, Canada and elsewhere in the world.
The new green community spaces have been designed as collective gardens, making participation possible in both public and private areas. This is founded in a desire to offer some simple food production models that are affordable, environmentally friendly and easy to adapt for use in both the South and the North, in a response to growing urbanization, pollution and growing urban poverty.
In 2008, the Rooftop Garden Project earned the highest environmental distinction in Quebec, the Phénix de l’environnement, and received the 2008 National Urban Design Award from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, the Canadian Institute of Planners (CIP) and the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects (CSLA) for its collaborative project with McGill University's Minimum Cost Housing Groupe and Santropol Roulant.
Finances
Alternatives garners its financial support from a combination donors and members, as well as partner organizations working alongside Alternatives including major unions and church groups, international organizations and governments.
Supporters
Individuals across Canada contribute to Alternatives either as donors, members, or by subscribing to the newspaper.
Many activists, journalists, and public figures from Quebec, Canada, and the world support Alternatives. Among these are:
International development or global development is a broad concept denoting the idea that societies and countries have differing levels of economic or human development on an international scale. It is the basis for international classifications such as developed country, developing country and least developed country, and for a field of practice and research that in various ways engages with international development processes. There are, however, many schools of thought and conventions regarding which are the exact features constituting the "development" of a country.
The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) was a federal Canadian organization that administered foreign aid programs in developing countries. The agency was merged into the Department of Foreign Affairs in 2013 by the federal government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
The United Nations defines community development as "a process where community members come together to take collective action and generate solutions to common problems." It is a broad concept, applied to the practices of civic leaders, activists, involved citizens, and professionals to improve various aspects of communities, typically aiming to build stronger and more resilient local communities.
The term "sustainable communities" has various definitions, but in essence refers to communities planned, built, or modified to promote sustainable living. Sustainable communities tend to focus on environmental and economic sustainability, urban infrastructure, social equity, and municipal government. The term is sometimes used synonymously with "green cities," "eco-communities," "livable cities" and "sustainable cities."
Sustainable forest management (SFM) is the management of forests according to the principles of sustainable development. Sustainable forest management has to keep the balance between three main pillars: ecological, economic and socio-cultural. The goal of sustainable forestry is to allow for a balance to be found between making use of trees and also maintaining natural patterns of disturbance and regeneration. The forestry industry mitigates climate change by boosting carbon storage in growing trees and soils and improving the sustainable supply of renewable raw materials via sustainable forest management.
Community economic development (CED) is a field of study that actively elicits community involvement when working with government and private sectors to build strong communities, industries, and markets. It includes collaborative and participatory involvement of community dwellers in every area of development that affects their standard of living.
Sidney Ribaux is the co-founder and executive director of Équiterre, a non-profit organisation based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, promoting fair trade, energy conservation and ecological and socially just choices. Ribaux chaired the Board of Directors until 1998. Since then, as executive director, he has been involved in the development of Équiterre's strategies and educational projects on fair trade, ecological agriculture, energy efficiency and sustainable transportation.
Solidarity economy or Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) refers to a wide range of economic activities that aim to prioritize social profitability instead of purely financial profits. A key feature that distinguishes solidarity economy entities from private and public enterprises is the participatory and democratic nature of governance in decision-making processes as one of the main principles of the SSE sector. Active participation of all people involved in decision-making procedures contributes to their empowerment as active political subjects. However, different SSE organizational structures reflect variations in democratic governance and inclusive participation. Ultimately, SSE represents a crucial tool in guaranteeing that social justice ideals are upheld and that the wellbeing of the most vulnerable populations is paid attention to during the planning processes.
Development and Peace-Caritas Canada is the official international development arm of the Catholic Church in Canada. It is a member of Caritas Internationalis, CIDSE, the Halifax Initiative and many other networks. Through its membership in the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, Development and Peace is also connected to the Humanitarian Coalition, a coalition of Canadian non-governmental organizations that partner with the Government of Canada, and mobilize media, businesses and individual Canadians to raise money in response to humanitarian catastrophes around the world.
Sustainability metrics and indices are measures of sustainability, and attempt to quantify beyond the generic concept. Though there are disagreements among those from different disciplines, these disciplines and international organizations have each offered measures or indicators of how to measure the concept.
The Canadian Community Economic Development Network (CCEDNet) is a member-driven Canadian organization, founded in 1999 to increase the scale and effectiveness of community economic development (CED), helping organizations and individuals strengthen their communities and create solutions to local needs. CCEDNet was created to strengthen community economic development in urban, rural, northern, and Aboriginal communities across Canada in order to contribute to a better social, economic, and environmental conditions at the local level. CCEDNet's members are from community-based organizations, co-operatives, social enterprises, practitioners, active citizens, researchers, and other organizations from every region of Canada. Members are located in all provinces of Canada and two territories and are engaged in a range of activities focused on addressing the inequities born out of the mainstream economy, generally through working with those who have barriers to social and economic inclusion.
NetCorps was a volunteer-organizing coalition consisting of nine Canadian non-governmental organizations (NGOs), funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and managed by the NetCorps coordination unit. Through the program, the organizations created international information and communication technologies (ICT) internships in developing countries around the world. Interns typically participated in six-month programs, leaving between August and November for host organizations in the placement countries. Positions were limited to 19–30-year-old Canadian citizens or landed immigrants who had "appropriate information and communication technologies skills". Typical duties included creating webpages, developing databases, computer networking, setting up hardware, preparing manuals and other documentation, and general-to-advanced computer instruction.
Connexions is the central online library and archive for Canada's movements for social change. The non-profit project also maintains a comprehensive directory of Canadian associations and NGOs.
The Halifax Initiative is a coalition of Canadian non-governmental organizations for public interest work and education on international financial institutions. Canadian non-governmental organizations formed the Halifax Initiative in December 1994 to ensure that demands for fundamental reform of the international financial institutions would be high on the agenda of the upcoming June 1995 Group of 7 meeting in Halifax. The Halifax Initiative is a coalition of development, environment, faith-based, human rights and labour groups.
The Confederation of Canadian Unions is a national trade union centre, a central labour body of independent unions in Canada.
Since its inception the Baháʼí Faith has had involvement in socioeconomic development beginning by giving greater freedom to women, promulgating the promotion of female education as a priority concern, and that involvement was given practical expression by creating schools, agricultural coops, and clinics.
A sustainability organization is (1) an organized group of people that aims to advance sustainability and/or (2) those actions of organizing something sustainably. Unlike many business organizations, sustainability organizations are not limited to implementing sustainability strategies which provide them with economic and cultural benefits attained through environmental responsibility. For sustainability organizations, sustainability can also be an end in itself without further justifications.
Community food security (CFS) is a relatively new concept that captures emerging ideas about the central place of food in communities. At times it refers to the measure of food access and availability at the community level, and at other times to a goal or framework for place-based food systems. It builds upon the more commonly understood concept of food security, which refers to food access and availability at an individual or household level (in health and social policy, for instance) and at a national or global level (e.g., in international development and aid work). Hamm and Bellows (2003) define CFS as “a situation in which all community residents obtain a safe, culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet through a sustainable food system that maximizes community self-reliance and social justice” (p. 37). CFS involves social, economic, and institutional factors, and their interrelationships within a community that impact availability and access to resources to produce food locally. It takes into account environmental sustainability and social fairness through measures of the availability and affordability of food in that community relative to the financial resources available to purchase or produce it.
CIDSE, which is short for "Coopération Internationale pour le Développement et la Solidarité", is an umbrella organization for Catholic development agencies from Europe and North America.
Kalpavriksh is a non-profit organisation based in India with its office in Pune, Maharashtra. The organisation takes up research, networking, education, grassroots work, advocacy and activism in the field of environment, ecology, development, and alternatives. The institute was formed in 1979 when a student-led group began to campaign for Delhi Ridge Forest.
References
↑ Ivison, John (December 5, 2009). "Funding for leftist group to be cut". National Post.
Alternatives International, the 9-member federation of international development and solidarity organizations of which Alternatives Montreal is the Canadian representative.
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