CED In Nova Scotia: An Overview
All across Nova Scotia, people are banding together with one goal in
mind - to make their communities better places to live and work. They're
doing C-E-D: community economic development.
C-E-D is fundamentally rooted in community. For CED to happen, local
people have to take the initiative, get involved and learn to work together.
Then, sometimes with the support of CED practitioners and government,
and sometimes without, the people take a hard look at themselves, identify
their strengths, and decide what they should do and how they'll do it.
In Nova Scotia, the results are as wonderful and diverse as our communities
themselves.
The Avon Spirit
The people of Avondale, Hants County
can testify that great things happen when you work together and build
on the strengths of your community. The Avon River was home to a prosperous
ship building industry during the last century. Inspired by the area's
history and recognizing that they had a wonderful tradition to draw
on, a group of local residents decided to build a wooden ship and rebuild
the local economy at the same time. As part of the process, they created
the Avon Spirit Co-operative Ltd., a co-operatively-owned company that
enabled local people to invest in the project. Working with the Avon
River Heritage Society, the Co-operative constructed a ship yard next
to the Society's museum, tea room and gift shop complex. Later, they
opened a wooden boat building school. Today, people come from far and
wide to watch and learn how to build traditional sailing ships and boats.
And, they bring their spending money with them. By building on their
history, the people of the area are creating employment, generating
tourist revenue and ensuring that the tradition of wooden ship building
continues on the Avon River.
CED & IT
Building on tradition is one thing; communities
are also learning to take advantage of new technology. They're setting
up community access (CAP) sites, places where local people can go to
use a computer and go on-line to the Internet. In north eastern Nova
Scotia, the Strait East Nova Community Enterprise Network (SENCEN),
helps them to get organized. SENCEN is a partnership of the Strait Regional
School Board, and the Strait Highlands, Guysborough and Antigonish Regional
Development Authorities. Many of its staff are young people from the
area. Under SENCEN's guidance, communities are finding out that information
technology is useful to people in rural areas. Local businesses are
being introduced to electronic commerce, learning how to sell their
products on-line. People living in isolated areas now have access to
university courses and new educational opportunities. Young people are
setting up web sites to promote their communities. Tourism operators
take reservations on-line. By being able to access information technology
in their own back yard, Nova Scotians are discovering new opportunities
for learning, new forms of employment for themselves and new ways to
reach out to the world.
Diversification
Diversification of the local economy
is often an important goal of communities starting to do CED. Diversification
means creating a variety of opportunities in different sectors of the
economy instead of relying on one big industry. Diversification helps
communities ride out the boom and bust cycles that typically affect
single industry economies.
The people of Isle Madame made diversification a top priority for their
Development Isle Madame Association (DIMA). DIMA is a community-owned,
non-profit company that works with residents of Isle Madame to create
business and employment opportunities. It was created by local people
in response to the collapse of the ground fishery. The people themselves
established the Association's priorities, insisting that development
be based on the community's strengths and that the economy be diversified.
As a result, DIMA has projects going in aquaculture, eco-tourism, small
manufacturing, telecommunications and information technology. The Island's
youth have played an enormous role in the Island's transformation. Many
of them came home from away to play an active role in DIMA and set up
local businesses to create their own future.
Not just economic development. Social
development too.
However, CED isn't just economic development.
CED is about building communities. Often that means meeting the social
needs of the community in order to gain economic benefits. In the Halifax
County communities of Lucasville and Upper Hammonds Plains, for example,
social development is a huge part of their CED process. Sharing a common
heritage and common interests, several years ago they pooled their resources
and set up their own development office. A plan was developed in which
everyone in the two communities was consulted and had an opportunity
to participate. The development office coordinates the work, but the
people of Upper Hammonds Plains and Lucasville pitch in to help, frequently
on a volunteer-basis. The results are inspiring. They've built houses
for each other, lobbied the government for better roads and infrastructure,
set up academic upgrading programs and training opportunities for residents,
created summer day camps for local children, renovated their community
centres, and more.
While Lucasville and Upper Hammonds Plains are a great example of two
communities sharing resources, it'shappening on a province-wide basis
as well. The Coastal Communities Network (CCN) brings together people
from community organizations, educational institutions, businesses,
fishers, government representatives, social justice groups and churches
from all over the Nova Scotia. Before CCN was started, many of its members
never worked together. Now they meet with common goals - to share ideas
and information and to develop strategies that promote the survival
and development of Nova Scotia's coastal and rural communities.
People quietly building opportunities.
There are so many more stories of people
quietly building opportunities in their hometowns. In Canso, the Stan
Rogers Festival brings thousands of visitors into the community each
July. They're welcomed by more than 400 volunteers, a remarkable feat
considering Canso has a population of only 1,200 people. This community-run
festival builds on the legacy of Stan Rogers and Nova Scotia's musical
tradition, and is estimated to bring about $1.5 million to the local
economy each year.
Combining arts and culture with an entrepreneurial spirit works in Bear
River too. A group of dedicated volunteers turned their abandoned community
school into a vital new centre of economic and community activity. The
Bear River Community School is now the Oakdene Centre, a complex that
houses craft studios, a community access computer site, and space for
events like music festivals and community meetings.
These examples only begin to get at the level of activity going on in
Nova Scotia. People all across the province are taking control of their
destinies and working together to make their communities better places
to live and work. And in the tradition of community-based economic development,
they're doing it in their own way; finding out what works best in their
own context, and then getting on with it.
CED works for Nova Scotia. It makes communities stronger, and creates
a future for our youth. It's about the sustenance and survival of communities.
And it means a better life for all of us.
For more Nova Scotia CED Success stories click here.