“A few years ago we became the leader in this community in introducing and implementing Developmental Assets for our children and youth. As a result, we became the lead agency in securing federal funding for three consecutive years in order for our counties of Leeds and Grenville to form the coalition that is presently charged with this responsibility. This coalition has grown to accommodate over 40 agencies and individuals from the community.”
“Understanding your community needs present and future is a critical piece to successful capacity building for organizations and community. In Thunder Bay we know that while our general youth population is declining we can project that the number of aboriginal youth coming into Thunder Bay from surrounding reserves continues to increase and will continue to shape the way we deliver service in the north. To this end, we provided a project with aboriginal communities hiring aboriginal youth to design a website of aboriginal services and launch it to the community (www.aerc-thunderbay.org).”
“BEC is currently managing a multi-million dollar project to develop a Niagara portal (http://www.yourniagara.ca) and get municipal services on-line. This partnership includes 12 municipalities, two school boards, as well as the college and the university in Niagara. Community capacity building requires a very special and complex partnership to be effective, it is for this reason that there is often a need for a neutral entity to manage the project for the partners who are attempting to build community capacity. We offered to provide this service, and it has worked well for the project and us.”
Three years ago we initiated lunches for all youth service deliverers. The mandate being to share information, prevent duplication of service and identify gaps. We are still hosting these lunches once each quarter and have 30 to 40 participants. Not bad for a small community of 22,000 people.”
Employment and Education Centre, Brockville
