Feeling at home on the Island
Community navigator pilot project helping newcomers adjust to life in P.E.I.
ALBERTON – Scott Smith spent four-and-a-half years living and working in the Dominican Republic. Now he’s putting that experience to use helping newcomers to Prince Edward Island’s western Prince County become familiar with their new home.
Smith has taken on the role of community navigator for West Prince, a one-year pilot project that seeks to make newcomers to the region feel welcome, while promoting cultural inclusions and explaining to West Prince residents and communities the importance of growing the region’s population.
“I integrated myself there (in the Dominican Republic). I was a total newcomer, in a way, when I moved down there. And I had to navigate the area without knowing anyone,” Smith said.
“So, I can see it from the perspective of people coming here, now. I’m familiar with the area of West Prince, having been born and raised, and gone to school, here. I see it from the other side now. That definitely gave me some insight into language barriers and just different cultural norms.”
Retention, said Maxine Rennie, is an important objective of the community navigator project. She is executive director of CBDC West Prince Ventures, sponsor of the two-month-old project.
“It’s about being aware that we need new residents,” she said. “We need to grow our population to grow our communities for economic viability, for our schools, for our businesses.”
Rennie said momentum for the project started about two years ago, when members of the region’s growing Filipino community sought help in further integrating into the community.
That led to a well-attended neighbour-to-nNeighbour event, which she described as “a cultural exchange between our local culture as well as the new residents’ culture, and each one learning from each other.”
The community navigator project is now in the early stages of planning a larger scale community awareness event for this fall.
“If people feel they’re part of something, they’re more likely to stay,” Smith said. “So, we want to help them find what they’re looking for and (to) feel like they’re part of here.”
That includes finding answers to questions they have, such as in transportation and housing, and in being a resource for people seeking services or looking to become a volunteer in the community.
“We do want to identify gaps,” Smith said. “That’s a big part of the project, so, if there is something where people are struggling with any part of the process, we want to try to have a resource or an answer for them.”
He will also advocate with the funding partners and other government agencies for help in filling those gaps.
“It’s about understanding what’s happening in the region, and that’s the role Scott has, to be getting the feedback from the community and from the employers, so that we can feed it back to government: ‘These are our gaps, this is what’s happening in the region,’” Rennie said.
Sometimes it’s just a matter of being included.
Smith is building a list of “champion families” from West Prince; individuals and families who can be called upon to interact with newcomers to the area, possibly including them in social events, giving them a tour of the area or even inviting them for a meal.
It’s all about helping the newcomers, whether they are professionals, temporary foreign workers or people relocating or retiring to West Prince from another part of the country, he explained.
“People will settle where people will settle, but if they’re in this area we want to work with them,” Smith said.