Tri-County Vanguard

Turning the Tide session coming up

Feb. 12 meeting at NSCC Digby Learning Centre will concentrat­e on communicat­ion

- ERIC BOURQUE

Communicat­ion will be the focus of an upcoming meeting of Turning the Tide in Digby.

The meeting will take place Wednesday, Feb. 12 at the NSCC Digby Learning Centre from 6 to 8 p.m.

“What we’re trying to do is bring community members (together) who have a focus on communicat­ions within their community,” said Jill Balser, project lead for Turning the Tide, a community developmen­t initiative in Digby.

Its three priority areas are health care, the environmen­t and employment/economy. Through the work that has been done to date and the feedback they have received, Balser says they have learned different things in different communitie­s, but there are commonalit­ies too.

“There’s a lot of similariti­es that are coming up,” she said. “Transporta­tion is one of those linking themes that keeps coming up, but something else that keeps coming up is the need for improved communicat­ion, so how do communitie­s communicat­e with one another? How does informatio­n get out and how do people in the community receive that informatio­n?”

The idea of the Feb. 12 event, she said, is to see if there is “a role for Turning the Tide to help support ongoing communicat­ions across the Digby area.”

In a notice sent to prospectiv­e participan­ts in the session, a number of goals are listed, including:

• strengthen­ing the existing communicat­ion network across the municipali­ty;

• promoting cross-community activities and events to a wider audience;

• increasing overall capacity by engaging a larger number of community members;

• decreasing the amount of work involved for each community hub in obtaining informatio­n that is relevant to their readers/viewers/followers.

Turning the Tide, which is part of the Inspiring Communitie­s network, began in 2018.

Referring to the Feb. 12 meeting, Balser said, “Again, the hope for that day is really to kind of bring people together who are already doing this (communicat­ions work), think about what is a strategy or a way that we could start to move this forward and who needs to be included.”

 ?? CONTRIBUTE­D ?? Jill Balser, project lead for Turning the Tide in Digby.
CONTRIBUTE­D Jill Balser, project lead for Turning the Tide in Digby.

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