I wrote this paper in preparation of a Conference we organised in Montréal, in 2000. The theme was "Building civil society with community development".

The paper is titled : Civil Society, CLSCs and the community development movement. Here are the two first paragraphs.

The place of the CLSC (Centre local de services communautaires - Local Community Services Centre) in civil society: an academic or Byzantine debate perhaps, but a significant one for those involved in CLSC resource management and allocation, or for those interested in the relationship between a local provider of primary-level healthcare and social services, and the community it serves.

A network of CLSCs was created in Québec, a daring and original idea combining individual and collective social services with healthcare and nursing. But who, exactly, "created" it? In fact, it took local communities fifteen years of battles with the Ministry for the very idea of the CLSC to be accepted; for fifteen years, the Federation of CLSCs fought to counter the Ministry’s reductionistic vision of these centres as simply a network of home care and local health clinics. (.... more)

This is one of the few papers I ever wrote in english. Thought it would be a good place to post it !

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