Case Study: Shorefast

Location: Fogo Island, Newfoundland, Canada

Investment type: Bank deposits ranging in type from individual community members through to larger investment actors

Established as a registered charity in 2004, Shorefast was created to build economic and cultural resilience on Fogo Island, Newfoundland – a region previously devastated by the decline of the cod fishery industry.

Shorefast has been focused on developing a holistic set of initiatives with the local community to develop a thriving and ecologically sound local economy. These initiatives include:

• Shorefast Business Assistance Fund: modelled on Grameen Bank, the fund provides micro-loans ‘on friendly terms’ to start or develop locally-owned businesses on the island
• Community Enterprises: Shorefast helped develop a suite of high calibre businesses that provide meaningful employment and generate income that is reinvested in the community through the organisation’s programs. Enterprises include the globally renowned Fogo Island Inn (a hospitality and tourism destination), Fogo Island Workshops (high quality furniture building on a long cultural tradition of boat building and home making), and Fogo Island Fish (responsibly harvested seafood business that is developing new domestic markets for premium fish products).
• Fogo Island Arts: the development of a residency-based contemporary arts and ideas organisation that supports research, production and exchange for artists and thinkers locally with leading practitioners globally.
• Economic Nutrition labels: a Certification Mark that is being piloted for widespread use by other communities. This financial transparency and accountability tool was modelled after food labels, to show the financial information behind any product or service and empower consumers to understand how it sustains the economic health of the community. The label shows the geographic distribution of every dollar, and the percentage that goes to local labour, materials or marketing.

Shorefast’s work spans a range of other initiatives, from youth scholarships to environmental stewardship that we don’t have space to list here! The organisation is now leading a Pan-Canadian Community Economies program focused on advancing place-based community development across Canada.

“The system that we're trying to change is the money system in the broadest sense. And if you go underneath that you're talking about: ‘what is our value system?’ And ‘what is the relationship between things that have inherent value and their financial value?’

My experience of most philanthropic organisations is they have the same broken relationship with money as every other organisation on the planet.”

-Zita Cobb, Shorefast. (Leadbeater, Smith and Winhall 2022)

http://shorefast.org

This case study is an extract from Regenerating Investment in Food and Farming: A Roadmap.