Strengthening Rural Organizations in Northumberland (STRONG)

This project grew out of the People, Partnerships and Possibilities (PPP) Network in Trent Hills.  A number of groups and organizations in the PPP network wanted additional support and training opportunities to strengthen positive change within their organizations. The Ontario Trillium Foundation provided the YWCA’s Compass Training Centre with a grant to conduct organizational development work in Trent Hills.  In 2010, lessons learned from the STRONG project will be shared by the project partners with the PPP Network in Trent Hills.

The STRONG partners: Campbellford and District Palliative Care; Northumberland Big Sisters Big Brothers; Campbellford Nursing Team of VON. As well as community capacity building organizations: The Campbellford Seymour Community Foundation and Northumberland United Way (pending).

Progress to Date

The project started in May with a two step organizational assessment. Each group completed a strengths and weaknesses survey and also participated in an exercise to explore the core challenges that they were facing in their work. Once the core challenges were determined each group began discussing the solutions and what they want to accomplish over the course of the project with support from Compass Training.

STRONG Project Summer BBQ

(Click for larger photos)

On June 24th a STRONG project BBQ was held for all of the project partner organizations (staff and board members) as well as supporters from the YWCA of Peterborough; Northumberland Community Care; The YMCA Early Years Centre; The Municipality of Trent Hills; Campbellford Memorial Hospital Foundation and the Campbellford Rotary Club. The event was hosted by the Campbellford Seymour Community Foundation. Thank you to the volunteers who helped out during the BBQ!

Coming Up

NEW workshop proposed for all STRONG project partners in December on Digital Story Telling and Communicating Impact to the Community. The exact date and location will be announced next month.  

An Information and Communication Technology grant proposal is being developed in cooperation with the Municipality of Trent Hills to bring a spring workshop to the PPP Network. The workshop will present digital stories from STRONG project partners and introduce Social Networking Tools (Blogging; Face book, Twitter) for community event promotion; fundraising; volunteer recruitment and strengthening community services.  More information will be sent out later in the fall.

For more information about the STRONG project or up-coming events for the PPP network please contact Heidi Schaeffer,