Last week the Altona Community Foundation hosted one in a series of regional get togethers connecting Manitoba's 57 community foundations. Representatives from the Plum Coulee, Morris. Winkler and Morden Foundations participated. Staff from Endow Manitoba facilitated the meeting. A total of eleven conferences are being held, mostly in person, across the province.
Altona Community Foundation Vice President Al Friesen says the group was invited to submit discussion topics ahead of time, and from those the participants jumped into more specific topics.
"Basically we, as a group, determined what we're going to talk about, and we moved into different roundtables, but all topics of interest to community foundations and with a particular slant or bent on rural Manitoba, because that's where we would be most comfortable with, as they referred to it, as hyper local leadership," said Friesen.
How best to reflect increasing community diversity?
A variety of topics were explored during the night including effective engagement of the community, reflecting community diversity and the relevance of community foundations.
"We still encounter situations where people are saying, 'Hey, what's the Community Foundation all about, what do you guys do," shared Friesen. "That's an ongoing sort of story that we need to tell. Our communities are all changing and becoming more diverse. How do we make sure we better reflect that kind of new look, or that more interconnected side of our community? How do we involve more generations? Because many of these community foundations had their roots back some 30 years, and so those supporters are older now, so how do we attract new ones and continue to retain the original ones."
'Learning from and walking with' community
Reflecting on the discussions had, Friesen said it wasn't a surprise to see the people that care for community foundations also care about their community.
"Sometimes the best answers, or the best ideas, are the ones sitting right next to you at the table," he said. "As one of the coordinators pointed out, there is no silver bullet to success, but rather a bunch of smaller ideas and things that you can implement. I think the focus for us would be the importance of representing the diversity in our town. The increasing diversity is something we we should really focus on, and continue to focus on. Someone used the phrase 'learning from and walking with', as opposed to simply just telling this is the vision for the community, rather we're looking for ways in which people to connect with us and give us some direction, as well."
Community Foundations Day in Manitoba was this past Saturday, April 25th.
- With files from Candace Derksen -