Arctic-Cooperatives Limited

Kara Passey's final placement was with Arctic-Cooperatives Limited. She writes:

"My 2019 field placement was hosted by Arctic-Cooperatives Limited at their Winnipeg office, the supporting administrative body to co-op businesses owned by arctic communities in Canada. Businesses include grocery stores, hotels, gas, cable and internet, as well art purchase and resale. The majority of communities in partnership with Arctic Co-ops are Inuit or Dene, which requires the organization to ensure cultural competence in all of their pursuits. As a student whose experiences in this field mostly applies to research or policy analysis, I was interested in the opportunity to do development rather than theorize or write about it. When I approached Arctic Co-ops about a field placement opportunity, they struggled to place me within the organization because the MDP program provided me with a wide range of knowledge and training that could be applied across departments. Because of my past experience in art and communications, I joined the marketing and communications team. This team was a fairly new development of the organization, and I quickly saw how Indigenous research methods and evaluation could be applied to communications strategies, such as respectful and reciprocal interaction with community members to ensure their best interests and perspectives are forefront when developing the messaging and branding associated with the organization. This position also allowed me to meet with many different departments and engage with their work which exposed me to the inner mechanisms of the organization and how they work. Projects I worked on included a redesign of their grocery flyer (including translation into syllabics), the redesign of graphics to ensure accessibility to community members and accurate representation, and a photo contest wherein community members submit their photography to build our stock image library and are rewarded in gift cards to spend at their local co-op businesses."