Big Exchange - Community Vitality

How can a community build more engagement?

How can a community get more things done?

How can we make our communities more vibrant?

Vitality in rural communities brings more memorable experiences, strong relationships and improves quality of life.  Every community has a uniqueness, yet some rural places seem to grow and thrive, while others seem more challenged in strengthening social relationships and ties to their communities.  This Big Exchange will explore ways to make rural communities really wonderful places to spend our lives.  Take this opportunity to share your ideas and experiences with our two conversation leaders.

Betty Bastien Sikapinaki. PhD RSW. Currently with Red Crow Community College on the Blood reserve, as the Director of Academic Programs. Her research and publications include Indigenous ways of knowing, revitalization of Indigenous languages, intergenerational trauma.  She has received awards which are highlighted by the Alumni awards from the Universities Lethbridge and Calgary, and by Lethbridge and YWCA and District and Esquao Award for her distinguished commitment for the Advancement of Women. She has recently launched groundbreaking Programs, the Indigenous Bachelor and Master's Social Work Degree; and her work has carried her internationally, the most satisfying was the Revitalization of Language and Culture Project in Guizhou China. 
 
Dr. Tanyss Munro has had unusual experience through her work as an educator from the local to  the federal and intra-governmental levels both in Canada and abroad. She is deeply committed  to creating a world worthy of our world’s children and youth.  Within Canada, her work has included living in remote Indigenous communities in Canada’s far  north as school principal and director of education with dysfunctional schools.  Internationally, she directed Good Governance for the Commonwealth of Learning in Africa, Asia  and the Pacific working with universities, governments and non-governmental organizations. What binds the overlooked Indigenous populations and the illiterate, destitute women in mega-city  slums, is her conviction that these dismissed populations are as capable as anyone in the world of doing  the impossible if they’re just given half a chance.  For their work, she and her husband were recipients of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medals.

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