 Communities
in Action
The Holland Centre’s Applied Dissemination Program
Holland Centre, in partnership
with CHSSN, have developed a program to assist English-speaking
minority communities in the Province of Quebec to create and
implement community development strategies which will improve
their health and well-being. This initiative is based on the
research Holland Centre has done over the last two years as to
why the Holland Centre has been so successful in providing
health and social services to the English-speaking minority of
the Quebec City region. This research identified two key
factors in a successful approach to community development for a
minority population: community governance and building a strong
knowledge-base of the minority community and the environment
that surrounds it.
Tools for Communities
The assistance our team
provides to communities is in the form of community development
resources, guidance, experience, and a neutral perspective. We
help communities help themselves. Holland Centre has created
two resource tools that are readily accessible to anyone. First
is a book entitled The Holland Centre
Experience: A community development model for minorities.
This book illustrates the unique elements of doing community
development in a minority community setting. It is available
for free directly from the Holland Centre at:
Holland Centre
Research and Development
1270, Ch. Ste-Foy
Quebec, QC G1S 2M4
Telephone: (418) 683-9274
Fax: (418) 681-9265
Website:
www.hollandcentre.ca
E-mail:
res-dev@hollandcentre.ca
The
document can also be downloaded in a
PDF
format by clicking on the icon to the right.
The Holland Centre has also
created in collaboration with the CHSSN and the YMCA a short
video introducing the concepts of knowledge-based community
development. This video is available for free on CDRom and can
be obtained free of charge by contacting Holland Centre at the
above address. You can also play
a preview version slide show by
clicking on the icon to the left.
To print out the accompanying audio transcript,
click here.
The material on
knowledge-based community development presented to the YMCA
Conference on Development Through Partnership held in March 2002
is also available by clicking on the following link:
http://www.chssn.org/ymca5/english/default.html
Projects in Progress
In addition to these
resources Holland Centre will be working with selected
communities to assist them with their community development
goals.
We are working with groups
that are:
-
Open to a knowledge-based
development approach;|
-
Committed to having the
greater community participate in the process;
-
Committed for the
long-term;
-
Willing to commit
resources, and;
-
Respected by the community
at large.
To date we are working with
three communities: an English-speaking rural community that is
based in and around Thetford Mines, an association that serves
the English-speaking community in the Eastern Townships and we
have recently begun to work with the English-speaking community
located at the tip of the Gaspé Coast. All three of these
groups have very different contexts and challenges, but they all
share a common theme: wanting to improve the quality of life for
English-language minority communities in a context of cutbacks
and an increasing burden on the private sector and the community
to provide for the needs of the community. The members of these
communities also share a sense of isolation.
Thetford Mines
The Thetford
Mines community is actually a group of rural and urban
communities located in and around Thetford Mines. The Holland
Centre was approached by members of the community who felt that
although there were some services and activities organised for
seniors, the community could be doing more for all age groups.
The first task was to raise awareness in the greater community
about the community’s needs and then assist them to see how they
could respond to those needs.
The approach
used was to invite community members to get involved in the
process and then encourage them to take control of it. Two
local individuals met with key community groups and started a
visioning process. Their objective was to ask each group to
describe their role in the community, their strengths, their
assets, the problems or challenges the community faced and their
own vision of the future for the English-speaking community.
This strategy had the desired effect of raising awareness within
the community and got community members thinking about the
future and the possibilities. After these interviews were done,
a community meeting was held to report the results of this
community inventory. After the presentation volunteers were
requested for a working group. The objectives of this working
group were to more closely examine the needs of the community
and create a plan to address these needs.
After 18 months the working group has taken very
concrete steps towards ensuring the long-term future of the
community. They have hired a community animator, built a
community corporate structure that will maintain initiatives and
manage the funds for the community. They began a community
newsletter and built programs that would support the community
such as a community directory, youth support projects, a
community web site, a mom and tots play group, parenting
workshops, a movie club and internet access centres. They are
actively continuing their knowledge gathering about the
community through forums, surveys and a study on youth
retention.
Townshippers’ Association
The second group Holland Centre worked with was
an established organisation in the Eastern Townships called the
Townshippers’ Association. The organisation approached Holland
Centre to see if it could assist them in a strategic planning
process. This organisation already possessed a strong sense of
community governance, but they wanted to renew its focus and
assist its employees with an ever-increasing load of activities.
Under Holland Centre’s guidance the organisation
embarked on a strategic planning process. The organisation went
through a period of introspection and identified what they
wanted for priorities. The board of directors created a
committee devoted to making a plan to address these priorities.
The committee explored the strengths and weakness of the
organisation as well as the expectations of its stakeholders.
They devised a plan to address the new priorities of the
organisation and gave the organisation very specific objectives
for the next five years. The strategic planning committee
identified that creating a knowledge base was a priority for the
organisation. They identified that all future projects must be
based on sound community information and address the priorities
of the organisation. It streamlined the committee structure to
reflect the organisation’s priorities and the committee
evaluated each of the existing programs to determine if they
were in line with the newly identified priorities of the
organisation. The Association is now redefining how existing
resources are used in order to meet their defined needs.
The Gaspé
The English-speaking
communities on the tip of the Gaspé peninsula are a group of
rural communities running predominantly along the coast from
Parc Forillon to Percé. The Anglican Church is active in these
communities and has begun a process to organise the communities
and identify their needs and look towards building services.
They are looking towards Holland Centre to provide guidance
throughout their project and provide the experience in community
development they are lacking. They are also looking to Holland
Centre to bring an unbiased perspective to the process that will
improve the credibility of their efforts with all communities.
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