Photo: Iwan Baan
WHAT WE DO

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To build a resilient and prosperous future, we must create the enabling conditions for economic innovation and stewardship in the places we live.

Through in-person and virtual learning, we elevate place-based approaches from isolated success stories to a coherent strategy. With our partners, we’re creating a new field where practice and theory continuously inform one another.

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Learn more about our tools, workshops, and consulting services

The Shorefast Institute has built a “From Assets to Economy” toolset to support communities across Canda and beyond as they take charge of their economies. Grounded in nearly two decades of place-based work on Fogo Island and enriched by insights from community leaders coast to coast, the Institute offers frameworks, tools, and consulting services that are practical, accessible, and customizable.
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Community + Business Hub 

Our Community + Business Hub (a restored former Orange Lodge) is a learning space in our community of practice, Fogo Island. Rooted in our experience in regenerative tourism and social business, it offers programming that supports rural entrepreneurship, promotes economic literacy, and fosters the network connections essential for coming together to strengthen local economies.
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“We need to invest in communities because they are nation-building assets. These investments deliver social, economic, spiritual, and environmental returns.”  

- Matthew Mendelsohn 

Toolsets & Resources

FEATURED RESOURCE

A Possible Future for Canada: Capitalizing Places for Resilience and Regeneration

by Shorefast & Dark Matter Labs
Dark Matter Labs explores how Shorefast, in partnership with Fogo Islanders, are building a regenerative economy on the island through an iterative model of resource allocation that recognizes the challenges and opportunities of the local context, makes visible the intrinsic value of place, invests in the island’s collective self-awareness, creates the conditions for local agency, and builds demand and supply as a tool of resilience and regeneration.
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Explore this and many other resources in our Toolsets & Resources collection.
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