Thinking Global, Using Local - Gwen Patrick on Shorefast, Fogo Island and the Future of Social Enterprises

On September 25th, we had a delightful session on life on Fogo Island, Newfoundland, and how Shorefast is enabling a self-sustained community through social enterprise. Gwen Patrick, a fourth year Business Communication student and Kehoe Fellow at the Smith School of Business, had the opportunity to complete a Kehoe Internship with Shorefast over Summer 2018. She worked to measure, promote and support Fogo Island’s community and economy, as well as work within accounting and human resources policy development for Shorefast’s social businesses. Her talk provided an overview of her time at Shorefast, the history of Fogo Island, and the need for community engagement in building a social enterprise. 

Gwen started her talk with a brief history of Fogo Island. Fogo Island is the largest of the offshore islands in Newfoundland and Labrador, with a population of about 2200 people. The primary occupations on Fogo Island were fishing and boatbuilding. Over the last two decades, however, the island saw a lot of younger people migrating to bigger cities due to lack of growth opportunities. It was imminent that if initiatives to preserve traditions of Fogo Island weren’t taken, they would cease to exist after a couple of generations. 

Zita Cobb, a Fogo Islander and Founder of Shorefast was one such person who undertook initiatives to transform the community. After completing high school on Fogo Island, Zita decided to study business in order to understand the global economic systems that had disadvantaged Fogo Island and numerous other small communities – bringing many to the brink of extinction. She worked extensively in senior financial roles, until the early 2000’s, when she returned to Fogo Island. At first, she understood the need for intervention and through her successful career in finance, decided to offer scholarships and other monetary benefits to Fogo Islanders. However, soon it struck her that her benevolent actions needed to be more holistic in nature. Offering scholarships meant that the youth on Fogo Island had an incentive to move away from home, and considering job opportunities on the Island at the time, very little incentive to come back. That is when she decided to start Shorefast with her brothers Anthony and Alan, to give people a reason to return to Fogo Island after obtaining their education. Shorefast was built on the premise of self-sustainability of Fogo Island. Their ventures were divided into two parts: Charitable Programs and Social Enterprises. The idea was to build profitable Social Enterprises that could then fund the Charitable Programs. As of 2018, Shorefast is successfully running three social enterprises, namely Fogo Island Inn, Fogo Island Shop and Fogo Island Fish. These businesses are locally staffed, culturally homegrown and environmentally conscious. They support Shorefast’s Charitable Programs like Fogo Island Arts, New Ocean Ethic, Geology at the Edge Academic Residencies, Microlending, Boatbuilding, Vernacular Architecture, Geotourism, and Economic Development Partnership.

Gwen also spoke about the importance for community engagement in building a successful social enterprise. A notable initiative that Gwen spoke about was the ‘Economic Nutrition Label’ initiative by Shorefast, wherein they stipulate breakdown of costs at Fogo Island Inn. Similar to food nutrition labels in retail, these Economic Nutrition Labels constituted areas that the money goes to, such as Labour; Food, Room Supplies; Commission, Fees; Operations, Admin; Sales, Marketing; Contribution to Shorefast. It also mentions the geographic Economic Benefit Distribution in percentages (Fogo Island, Canada, Newfoundland and the Rest of World). This is particularly interesting because it shows the commitment of Shorefast to engage local communities as much as possible, right from sourcing to distributing.

We greatly appreciate Gwen’s dedication and work on Fogo Island. It was an insightful session for individuals working in the social arena as well as ones curious about life on Fogo Island in general.Key takeaways from the session would be that communities can become self-sustainable despite challenges that may seem unsolvable at first. It is a matter of local engagement with global learning.

Written by Shraddra Shenoy