Sarah Croft

Kimberly Orren is a co-founder of a social enterprise, Fishing for Success. Before starting her social enterprise career, Orren was a high school science teacher. She decided to leave her teaching career and go to graduate school in Florida to study fishery and aquatic sciences. During 2009, Orren visited environmental education programs from the West Coast to the East Coast of Newfoundland to see what people were doing, and in 2012 she decided to buy property in Petty Harbour where she then gathered board members and incorporated as a nonprofit in April 2014.

Orren wanted to connect young people to place and community and a way to do this was through fishing. This is where she decided to use social enterprise as a tool. Herself and co-founder, Leo Hearn, became interested in the preservation of traditional fishing mainly due to their upbringing. As kids growing up in Newfoundland and Labrador, one of the things they could legally do was cut out cod tongues on the wharf and sell them. This revenue meant a lot to children. It was a sense of accomplishment, where you learn basic business and customer service skills, which children today are losing out on. Both Orren and Hearn want society to get back in touch with certain traditional ways, especially fishing.

The photograph shows both Orren and Hearn (green suits) with a family from Syria who had just arrived in Newfoundland. They heard about the opportunity to be introduced to our fishing culture in the province and took advantage of what Fishing for Success has to offer. Orren stated, “The three young girls were thrilled to see a woman driving the boat (me)! And their Dad told them they could grow up to be whatever they wanted to be!”

Fishing for Success

Fishing for Success is a nonprofit social enterprise dedicated to living, sharing, and celebrating the traditional fishing knowledge and culture that sustained generations of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. Their vision is that one day every child in Newfoundland and Labrador will once again be taught the traditional fishing knowledge and skill of their ancestors; that this will instill in them a sense of pride, of place, and a longing to protect and conserve their natural home.

Fishing for Success holds programs such as “Girls Who Fish”, “WiSH: Women Sharing Heritage” and “Youth Cod Fishery” with the goal to teach marginalized individuals the traditional way of fishing, as well as other outdoor activities. It also has tourism programs and experiences that help people gain these skills, which would otherwise be nonexistent overtime.

Interview

Q1: What products/services does your social enterprise provide?

A: “If you’re an adult, what you might see is that we provide a townie-tourist opportunity. We provide fishing experiences in the summer where you will learn about traditional fishing and receive full hands on experience. For example, we would take you hand-line fishing, you might learn how to make salt fish and then have some fish stew at the end or maybe create a fish painting. When we have snow, we have snow shoe hikes, and when we have ice on the ponds, we go ice fishing. So they’re all experiential visitor experiences. Often times we forget that even our local people want to be visitors or local tourists and try something new.

On the water in the summer at the height of our tourist season, we have tourists who go fishing, and/or go on iceberg excursions or ice tours. On the land here we have experiences like walkabouts, berry picking, and rope weaving/knot tying. And then of course we have specially designed experiences, so if you have a large group of people we can design something specifically to suit your needs.

If you’re a young person, we provide free programming such as our 12-week “Youth Cod Fishery” summer program where the youth will come out once a week for about 3-4 hours and they learn heritage skills with us. We might go look for macroinvertebrates in the ponds so they can see what the trout eat, or go pick berries. They can repair and paint dories then launch them and go out on the harbour. By the end of the 12 week program they actually get to go out on the ocean fishing and bring their fish back and process it with Leo and bring this food back home. We currently provide this for Thrive CYN youth and would like to expand!

Also if you’re a girl or woman, you might think about joining our “Girls Who Fish” program, which is for girls and women aged 8-80. It’s all about engaging women and encouraging them to do things in a supportive environment that they might not otherwise do by themselves. It’s all about changing the view of who is in the boat!”

Q2: Why did you start your social enterprise?

A: “We should talk about fishing as a human heritage activity because humans throughout prehistory have fished – even if for shellfish from the shore. Just over 100 years ago, 80% of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians were involved in the commercial fishery in some way. In 1992 just before the cod moratorium, 30% of us were involved in it and today it’s less than 2%; therefore, you can see that over time less and less of us are involved in a heritage industry. This heritage industry is connected to food, and connected to culture. You can go to George Street and hear music that’s related to fishing or go to The Rooms and see art work connected to fishing. It has formed so much of the foundation of our music and craft that we’d really be losing out a lot if we didn’t find a way to transfer it to our young people. The average age of fishermen is 60 and this is a big reason as to why it was started. We want to get young people connected to fishing. We thought, what kind of new pathway do we need to create for young people to experience it?”

Q3: Who is/are the target population(s) for your social enterprise?

A: “We’ve got two target populations I guess. Those people who are willing to pay for fishing experiences, whether these are tourists from away or residents. And then those who would benefit from our program, which would be anyone really who is marginalized by commercial or recreational fishery such as youth, women, and newcomers. The revenue generated from our tourism experiences pays for our youth programming, so when you go fishing with us – you are providing that experience for a young person!”

Q4: What does success look like for your social enterprise?

A: “We don’t want to stay only in Petty Harbour. We want to share our programming, and share our best practices and bring Fishing for Success to different communities. We believe that fishing is more than just about the fish – that it is the best way to connect others to nature, community, and one another across cultures and time! Fishing for Success believes that fishing is a basic human activity that everyone should participate in because it provides deep understanding about fish as food and how it drove our need to explore, create and invent! When we think about Newfoundland and Labrador, there’s so much around the water that could be jobs and careers for our young people if we just get them down to the water. Career development starts at an early age – by 7 to 9 years of age children have decided their area of interest! The greatest challenges we face right now and in the future are those centered on the ocean – like climate change, microplastics & acidification, and how to feed 9-10 billion people! And if we want our children to start thinking about how to help solve these problems, we have to get them back to the water. Fishing isn’t the end all – it is just the hook!

Q5: What’s been the most difficult thing about running your social enterprise? What do you think the biggest issue facing your SE is now? (If there are any)

A: “Social enterprises tend to be nonprofit and community need driven and I think when you start out new, your biggest challenge is trying to find someone to help with the bookkeeping and the accounting end of it, as well as policies and regulations. I think government is not quick enough to adapt or change policies and/or regulations to support the work of social enterprises especially because many social enterprises are working with the rapidly changing landscape in which our young people exist, for example. Finally, Fishing for Success is definitely capacity challenged! This past year there has been an increased need for our social good programming and we have been unable to meet all the requests.”

Q6: What’s been the most rewarding thing about running your social enterprise?

A: “Connecting with people from other places – almost immediately – by sharing fishing stories or family fish recipes! And discovering that we all have more in common, than we have differences. Seeing that my own experience of finding delight in catching my first fish is a universal experience among children of any age. I still can’t believe that I have the opportunity to share this moment with families and groups every weekend! Now that some of Fishing for Success programs are in their third year, it is grand to see some of the young women of Girls Who Fish, for example, gone on to create their own wonderful space. Many of them have earned their guide licenses, are developing their own adventure tourism social enterprises, or are taking on leadership roles with Fishing for Success.”

Q7: How can people get involved or help you moving forward with your social enterprise?

A: “The biggest thing is, we need access to fish. Right now we operate on the food fishery which starts July 1st, and only allows us to fish Saturday, Sunday and Monday through the summer, then only one week the end of September. This has decimated our youth programming. Teachers, counselors and social workers have access to their youth during the weekdays – not the weekend. And visitors? Most people don’t plan to the detail that they know that they can only experience the cultural activity of fishing on Saturday, Sunday or Monday only! I also wonder about most folks – who has the weekends off from work? There are people who must work on weekends and I think those who may have made this policy have forgotten that in our modern world of 24-7 life, there are those who MUST work the weekends. This fishing policy only provides for those privileged few who have weekends off! It’s ridiculously challenging! We’ve been petitioning DFO, and local MPs and MHAs to support us by having special access to fish to teach young people, women, newcomers and those who are marginalized by the fisheries. We’ve had no luck. So, definitely getting involved with that campaign will help.”