By Nancy Mattes, Director Social Prosperity Wood Buffalo
The 2012 Heart of Wood Buffalo Leadership Awards Ceremony and the 2012 SPWB Learning Conference provided two great opportunities to move the social prosperity agenda forward. The Heart Awards was the perfect venue to honour outstanding community leaders and to celebrate the many gifts that are shared so generously in the community. It was a wonderful evening from start to finish. Thanks to the sponsors, emcee Russell Thomas, Ian Hill, our keynote speaker, event organizer Kim Nordbye, the organizing committee and all the volunteers who helped make the event so successful. Great job, everyone!
On June 7th, emcee Russell Thomas led participants through the Action Plans for Social Prosperity Wood Buffalo. For more details, please read the full report. He described the project as a ship on a voyage to the island of tomorrow, a land of resilient and sustainable nonprofit organizations with capacity to meet community needs and to contribute to quality of life. Russell came up with this concept and I’d like to thank him for helping to find a simple but effective way to describe the project. Thanks Russell!
When participants were invited to take action and make a commitment to the social prosperity movement, almost everyone responded in one way or another. It was so exciting to see the first social prosperity quilt take shape! Want to join the social prosperity movement? Send me or Kim Nordbye an email at [email protected].
I’d like to thank Russell Thomas, Tanya Darisi, Lynn Chambers, Katharine Zywert, Kim Nordbye, Carolyn Evanco, Paulina O’Connor, Cheryl Rose, Cathy Brothers and Paul Parker for helping to make the day a great day of learning for all involved. Although the evaluations were quite positive, we learned that participants value time for networking and learning together. Future conferences will include more time for small group learning and networking.
We hope that you will use the capacity-building strategies within the Framework for Building Prosperous Communities as well as the newly launched Social Prosperity Toolkit. Check out the Toolkit on the Resources tab and make a commitment to use the toolkit this fall! Katharine Zywert did a fantastic job sifting through hundreds of resources to find the very best ones that address issues identified by community members in Wood Buffalo. She’s available to answer questions and can help you find other resources. Just send her a quick email at [email protected]
Check out the pictures from the June Learning conference on our Facebook page!
What’s Next?
Over the summer we will be working with Imagine Canada to develop the curriculum for the SPWB Accreditation Preparation workshop series. We are also meeting with Social Innovation Generation at the University of Waterloo to finalize details for the upcoming SIG workshop series. We will be recruiting volunteers to serve on multi-sectoral roundtables and we’re recruiting nonprofit organizations for the pilot groups. It’s all very exciting and we’re eager to get started!
Wonderful Staff!
I’d like to thank Kim and Katharine for their incredible hard work and dedication to this project. I love working with you!
Visionary Funders
Thanks to Cathy Glover and her team at the Suncor Energy Foundation for their tremendous support and belief in the work of Social Prosperity Wood Buffalo.
Steering Committee
A final word of thanks to the SPWB Steering Committee for their sage advice and advocacy.
Questions? Comments?
Please send me a note to let me know your thoughts: [email protected] I am longing to hear from you!
