About Us
The Prairie Cluster is currently pursuing two main projects, one on the impact of credit unions (P1) and the other on co-operative housing (P2).
P1- Measuring the impact of credit unions on wealth building in communities
Project Co-Leads:

Lou Hammond Ketilson is the Director and Fellow in Co-operative Management, at the Centre for the Study of Co-operatives. She holds a faculty appointment in the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Saskatchewan. Her research interests include management in co-operatives and other democratic organizations, community development, women in co-operatives, Aboriginal co-op development, and diversity on co-op boards and governance bodies. She is also a co-lead on P1-Measuring the impact of credit unions on wealth building in communities.

Jessica Gordon Nembhard is the co-lead for P1-Measuring the impact of credit unions on wealth building in communities. Her work focuses on measuring the impact of the social economy on communities, wealth accumulation and asset building through co-operative and shared ownership, and a comparison between Aboriginal/First Nations co-operatives in Canada and African-American-owned co-operatives in the US. Dr. Gordon Nembhard is a political economist and an Associate Professor of Community Justice and Social Economic Development in the Department of Africana Studies at John Jay College of the City University of New York (CUNY), as well as an affiliate of the Centre for the Study of Co-operatives at the University of Saskatchewan.
[Text and image source: Centre for the Study of Co-operatives]

Linda Moulin has recently become a co-lead working with Dr. Lou Hammond Ketilson for P1-Measuring the impact of credit unions on wealth building in communities. Linda is the Senior Vice President of Affinity Credit Union in Saskatoon, SK. At the Credit Union Executives Society meeting in Las Vegas in early November, Moulin was awarded the CUES Future Leader Award “for superior commitment to their CU, the movement and continuing education,” (CUES). Moulin served a pivotal role in the merger that grew Affinity to be among the top 10 largest credit unions in Canada.
[Text and image source: Measuring the Co-operative Difference Research Network Newsletter, 2(3), Fall/Winter 2011]
P1 Research Partners:
Linzi Williamson
See P1 Research Partners for expanded bios.
P2- The outcomes and impacts of co-operative housing
Project Lead:

[Text and image source: Centre for the Study of Co-operatives]
P2 Research Partners:
Karla Skoutajan
Alicia Lake
Nicole Bisson
Anna MacNeil
Karen Brodeur
Justin Ellerby
See P2 Research Partners for expanded bios.
Prairie Cluster Co-ordinator/Web Administrator:
Maria Basualdo is a PhD student in the InterDisciplinary Co-op Concentration Program at the University of Saskatchewan. She worked for Community University Institute for Social Researcha for several years and then worked for CUSO in Bolivia, since her return she has been working part-time as the Centre’s exhibit co-ordinator. Her community work focuses on building collaborations and partnerships to address social issues including poverty and cultural issues in remote communities using the co-operative framework as a way of addressing them. For the last year, Maria has been coordinating the activities for the Building Community: Creating Social and Economic Well-Being. This Exhibit was developed as one of the major dissemination strategies for the Linking, Learning, Leveraging SSHRC-funded research project investigating the Social Economy. Maria has facilitated the work in three provinces (Manitoba, Northern Ontario, and Saskatchewan) to produce smaller traveling exhibits, that are now touring the respective provinces.
Maria is looking forward to coordinating activities for the Measuring the Co-operative Difference Research Network for the Prairie Region.





