Frank Gale/TC Media
Bohan Furst of Memorial University’s Harris Centre speaks with one of the breakout groups at a regional workshop at Days Inn in Stephenville on Wednesday, including (clockwise) Rochelle Jesso, Marlene Powell, Victoria Keeping, Brady Marche, Alex Diamond and Andrea Rose of MUN’s faculty of education.
After getting into it, the discussion piqued her interest and the first-year community studies student at the College of the North Atlantic’s Bay St. George Campus was glad she did.
She had no reservations about sticking it out to the end and listening in on the topics.
Diamond, a Corner Brook resident, was part of a breakout group on youth, education and employment at the workshop that she said had some great discussion on health care, the education system and lots more.
Marlene Powell, a Happy Valley-Goode Bay resident who is also a first-year community studies student, said the workshop met her expectations and went well beyond.
She said it opened up a lot of doors for growth in the community and provided information about government and private grants that could be available for anyone interested in developing programs in the community.
Powell said they discussed issues that need to be attended to and ways in which they can effectively address them.
“There were a lot of good connections made here today and they’re talking about bringing other speakers to the College of the North Atlantic on the topic of community development,” she said.
Powell welcomes that because she said the program they are doing is all about community.
She said some of the topics at the workshop for their group dealt with mental health and addictions, cellphone coverage service, housing and employment, or often the lack of it.
The Harris Centre of Memorial University will take the results of the three discussion themes — community partnerships; tourism development; and youth, education and employment — back to researchers and try to make some of it happen.
The Harris Centre does regional workshops four times a year and this particular daylong one, for the whole of the southwest Newfoundland region, was their fall event.
It was designed to engage residents in the area, and this one had a lot of people representing different sectors of the community, from community organizations, educational organizations to health and other agencies.
The workshop had people who live and work in the area take part in brainstorming sessions to see if there are ways Memorial University can assist in making connections with the local community, such as tackling community problems.
It was also about coming up with solutions that area people can work on themselves through making connections.
