NB365: Sabine Dietz Of Aster Group In Sackville
This is part of a year-long ‘Love for Local’ series calledNB365: portraits of New Brunswick entrepreneurs, businesses and organizations. Huddle is a media partner with Love for Local. Today, we hear from Sabine Dietz of Aster Group in Sackville.
We are a member-owned cooperative, with three types of members: worker members, associate members, and non-profit members We are small, nimble, and while we are a consultant co-op, we support non-profits through a few things: donation of 10 percent of our profits to a foundation, translation services, and sharing our EV with our members.
We provide environmental services (birds and plants) and consultation services to communities preparing climate mitigation and adaptation and environmental plans. We also provide cooperative development support for all types of co-operatives.
Most of our work scaled down last year. We had to learn to use many online tools in order to keep doing what we could reasonably do in those circumstances. All in all, because of our model, we stuck together and persevered.
Our plan to provide the EV to our members also stopped in its tracks. This vehicle was bought in 2019, and our goal was to share it with non-profit members of our consultant co-operative. You may not be aware, but there are a lot of non-profits in Sackville. We understand the challenges they have in renting vehicles for work (no rental place in Sackville) and the fact that they often get large cars when they do rent (many of them are environmental organizations).
So the plan was to make the vehicle available to our non-profit members at a competitive cost, help them out, help the environment, and finance the vehicle. This is still the plan, and we hope, once those NGOs travel again, and require vehicles, that this plan can still be implemented.
Local businesses have a real impact because they bring people into the community, keep the money here, support community needs in various ways, and are always the first ones to adjust to better serve the people around them. Our organization is sensitive to our community and ecosystem. We want both of them to thrive.
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