A Story about Asset Based Community Development
ACTivate
The ACTivate (Activating Community Tourism) program is an exciting collaboration between GMIST and the Coady Institute at St. Francis Xavier University that supports community change leaders who wish to learn how to apply a citizen-led approach to community development.
ACTivate - Gros Morne
"A core belief of ACTivate is that if it's a “Great Place to Live, it's a Great Place to Visit,” so this program isn’t necessarily about following a templated or step-by-step approach to destination development, it is about thinking about your community holistically and understanding the need to put your community at the centre of the developmental process." via GMIST
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Our program coordinator was selected in 2023, out of over 75 applicants from across Canada to participate with 35 other community leaders from ACOA, CBDC, Parks Canada, and other non-profit and tourism development groups from Ontario and Atlantic Canada.
Together they learned different ways of engaging community members from an asset based community development (ABCD) perspective, by focusing on what a community has, so that we can use those assets to help fix what we need, to have thriving rural communities.
Learning Missions
As part of a select group of participants from the first ACTivate program, she's also traveled to Rocky Harbour, NL, Halifax, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Nebraska, USA, to expand her expertise and hands on learning for how impactful citizen led initiatives, including those related to food security, are to the survival of rural communities.
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A big part of what has been learned is the impact of taking care of core community principles such as youth engagement, adequate services for all, and the power of growing your own food from ‘cradle–to–grave’ can have on a community. She has then taken the principles of learning through ACTivate and applied them to all of her work in the region.
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GMIST has been instrumental as both an educator around economic development from a community led perspective, but they also believe in empowering it's program participants to get out there and do the work.
This led to a regional event on the Irish Loop called the "Power of Community" a workshop designed to introduce ABCD concepts to 7 communities from all across the island of Newfoundland that was presented by GMIST and The Coady Institute.
ECHO helped organize and facilitate this two day event held at The Wilds Resort, where we were thrilled to showcase the food, art, and culture that we are blessed to have on the Irish Loop. ​
Since we believe in knowledge sharing, when GMIST asked our program coordinator to support the second and third groups of ACTivate participants in Rocky Harbour in the spring and fall of 2024, we enthusiastically agreed. She learned just as much from the groups that attended, with participants that flew in from Ontario and all over Atlantic Canada; the future is bright in the hands of these kinds of changemakers.
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There's no doubt about it - this program has definitely ACTivated our organization and the region.
Citizen led movements work!
From Gros Morne to Nebraska ....
The Power of Community at The Wilds Resort