$15,000 in funding granted to study rural vitality

June 17, 2016 · 0 Comments

By Marni Walsh

More than 40 people representing a number of agencies in the Region attended a symposium on Rural Vitality on June 1, hosted by Headwaters Communities in Action (HCIA).

Held at the Lord Dufferin Centre, the event was the official start to the project as HCIA received $15,000 in funding from the Rural Ontario Institute (ROI) to produce data measuring the state of rural vitality in Headwaters.

Chief project manager Karen Hutchinson illustrated “where HCIA is in its Community Well-Being refresh project and how it connects with this effort,” explained HCIA Lead Shirley Boxem.

“The foundations of a healthy community were part of the original Well-Being report, and have now matured to include community resilience,” she said.

Headwaters, via HCIA is one of eight rural communities chosen by ROI to engage in a project measuring rural vitality in an effort to understand how “well-being fits into emerging priorities and funders’ strategies.

HCIA says the project aims to “deepen the understanding of effective practices for measuring community vitality.”

Keynote speakers for the event included the director of the Canadian Index of Well-Being and Professor at Waterloo, and Bryan Smale, explaining how Community Vitality is one of the key domains of the index.

“Everyone attending understood that overall health and happiness is not just guided by the economy,” says Ms. Boxem, “but rather social indicators.”

Mark Cassidy, Project Manager for the Measuring Rural Community Vitality Initiative from the ROI, shared the project outline with the audience and Bryan Smale summarized indicators of Community Vitality, including:

Participation in organized activities
Five or more close friends
Crime Severity Index
Feel safe walking alone after dark
Experience of discrimination based on ethno-cultural characteristics
Most or many people can be trusted
Provide unpaid help to others who are on their own
Somewhat or very strong sense of belonging to community

The goal is to “develop best management practices for translating Well-Being Assessments and measuring Rural Vitality into on the ground action with programs.”

Headwaters Communities in Action will be working on the project, collecting data through surveys and tabling statistics for recommendation over the next year.