SASCI hosting series of events, programs and workshops

Chris Davis, Pincher Creek Voice

In 2010, the Southwest Alberta Sustainable Community Initiative (SASCI) received a grant from the Rural Community Adaptation Program (RCAP), a Government of Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development initiative.  The grant was substantial, just a little bit shy of a quarter-million dollars.

The grant covers a whole range of programs and workshops planned by SASCI.

"We're running a series of workshops around capacity building in the community," explained SASCI Chairwoman Celesa Horvath.  "All of them are aimed primarily at community service organizations, like the not-for-profits and the volunteer based organizations that are delivering so many of the social services in the community. Our comunity organizations rely so much on volunteers, but we have some challenges because there's a lot off attrition, people have volunteer fatigue, we often see the same volunteers at everything, they get worn out or their capacity diminishes over time."


One of these workshops will be the upcoming Volunteer Capacity Building Program, to be held Thursday, September 22. This workshop will be hosted by Canadian consultants Chris Jarvis and Angela Parker of Realized Worth, who help companies and organizations develop outstanding volunteer programs. "I'm very excited about this workshop," said Horvath. "They get into the nitty-gritty of what makes a volunteer interested in volunteering, what motivates them, what kinds of experiences they seek out, what's most likely to attract and retain a good volunteer. I've been to a workshop put on by them before, and I've spoken at a couple of conferences with them around issues of corporate responsibility. This Chris Jarvis, the main speaker, is really dynamic, he gets people engaged, he'll be a lot of fun. The workshop is going to be a lot of fun."

This will be a four to six-hour event, open to 20 people.  The workshop will incorporate a significant 'doing' portion, allowing participants to sketch out an actual volunteer program for their own organization.  SASCI is funding the major costs of the workshop, using a portion of their RCAP grant, and is looking for sponsorship for some of the minor costs involved, such as lunch and venue, so that they can offer the workshop for free to the participants.
"We're hoping people who get value from this might be interested in other programs relevant to their organizations that SASCI will be running," said Horvath.  Contact SASCI at 403-627-1750 if you wish to sign up or have questions.

This 'suite' of capacity-building programs and workshops began with a 'Governance Capacity-Building' component. "Even looking at our own organization we realized that the way we organize ourselves and govern ourselves, the way we establish our board and manage our staff and our business...requires certain skills," explained Horvath. "We had enough funding to send four people, two from SASCI and two from other organizations, to take a three-day course delivered by the Institute of Corporate Directors (ICD) in governance essentials, specifically aimed at the not-for-profit sector." As part of the deal, "since they got to go  for free, all of the cost was covered by this grant by SASCI,"  the participants are expected to share what they've learned with their organizations "as well as through another workshop with the commmunity," explained Horvath. "It looks like we have enough funding to send up to two more people from other community service organizations in the fall."

Other pieces of the 'capacity-building' puzzle that SASCI will be addressing include conflict resolution and facilitation.

What is SASCI?
SASCI was established in 2002, when the Pincher Creek Chamber of Commerce identified a need to have a multi-stakeholder forum that would facilitate dialogue in the community, covering issues not usually addressed by the Chamber and outside of their purview. Horvath joined as an alternate director in 2004, became a full director a year after, served as secretary and treasurer,and was made the Chair after Kevin May retired from the position. "I've been chairing it every since.  It's challenging," said Horvath.  Her position is volunteer, unpaid.  Horvath also runs her own  full-time business,  Ventus Development Services, which provides corporate responsibility advice.
SASCI was organized to represent the community very broadly, with 12 seats, each of which is represents an aspect of our economy or social structure.  At present several seats are vacant, and SASCI is attempting to identify how best to fill them.

According to Horvath, SASCI is designed to be neutral and impartial, in an effort to "promote dialague and build the community's capacity for having meaningful conversations."
"We're hoping to be seen as providers of credible information, where every side of an issue is represented," said Horvath.  "We don't take a position on any particular issue.  We focus on trying to achieve community sustainability, and the way we hope to get there is by making the community better able to make well informed, intentioned, sound decisions, through information sharing and facilitation of dialogue.  We're facilitators, mediators, and providers of information."

Challenges
"We're still stuggling with how to engage youth," said Horvath, noting that SASCI meets in the day time during business hours, when kids are at school.
"One of our bigger challenges is a lack of operational funding. This RCAP grant doesn't pay for salaries or ongoing expenses."
SASCI is also struggling with finding and retaining volunteers to help with their many events.

Future plans
In addition to the RCAP-funded workshops and programs, SASCI has some big plans going forward.
"We plan to hold a summit among oil and gas companies and the municipal government as an information exchange.  We'd like to do something similar with landowner groups," explained Horvath.
"We want to start what we've tentatively called a 'trend watch' service." The idea behind this is to make the community more aware of broader scale issues, more future oriented than we may customarily  consider, and provide a little bit of analysis, and provide a forum for people to come together regularly to talk about how these issues affect the community and what, if anything, the community might want to do about it."


SASCI has an informative website at www.sasci.ca  Their phone number is 403-627-1750
To read more about workshop provider Realized Worth visit realizedworth.blogspot.com
To read more about the RCAP grant program and its recipients visit this link 
To read more about the Institute of Corporate Directors, visit www.icd.ca