The Rural Ontario Institute hosted a reunion Wednesday night for graduates and current members of their Advanced Agricultural Leadership Program at the Outdoor Farm Show in Woodstock.
Mari Veliz is the Healthy Watershed Manager at the Ausable Bayfield Conservation Authority and is a member of the current class, the nineteenth for the program. She says it's an eighteen month program and the current one ends in March of 2023. She says it involves seven seminars that would run for three or four days each, an international study tour for ten days to two weeks and a similar study tour somewhere in North America. And Veliz notes, she couldn't do it without the support of the Conservation Authority.
Veliz says the program is extremely valuable in developing communication skills and helping people learn to work as part of team and will help anyone who is interested in developing rural communities.
“Just that broader network of working with different people and seeing how they're managing and inter-acting with the challenges of today for rural communities, like economic, environmental and social well-being in our communities and looking at that from different perspectives," Veliz says.
Veliz says another one of the real strengths of the program is that it provides an opportunity for people from rural communities all over the Province to compare notes and share ideas.
“Whether you're in Southwestern Ontario, Northern Ontario, Eastern Ontario, even in the States we found people in rural communities everywhere really are facing similar challenges, with respect to labour shortages, communication issues with high speed internet, those kinds of things," says Veliz.
Veliz adds, much of the success of the program is the result of the planning and programming they do and the speakers they bring in to talk with the classes.