Long-term goals for MEC

I’ll have to jog folks’ memory a bit on this one. Back in 2006, the MEC board (before I joined) undertook a consultation of members across Canada to talk about what they felt the future of MEC ought to be and what its priorities should be. Thanks to that consultation, MEC developed a Charter and corresponding long-term goals. To find out more about the Charter, click here.

In the past three years, the board has been working with management the rest of the organization to move forward on these goals. If you’ve never seen or heard of this stuff, here’s the short version.

Goal#1

To increase participation in self-propelled wilderness oriented recreation in Canada.

Goal #2

To support the creation and stewardship of a comprehensive network of parks, wilderness and outdoor recreation in Canada.

Goal #3

To foster change toward environmental, social and economic sustainability in the marketplace.

Each of these goals have a bunch of intended outcomes associated with them (I won’t post them here, but if you’d like to see them, I could email them to you). But here’s one important point: as a co-op, we are only able to be successful in achieving these goals if we stay financially healthy. So one way that members are able to support the achievement of these goals in the long-term is to buy products that MEC sells.

And as a board member, part of my job is to make sure that the wishes of the membership, as expressed through consultation, are followed. In the past couple of years, I have participated directly on internal committees focused on advancing the organization’s work on all three of these goals.