Rural Asset Inventory Strategy – (RAIS)

…a community approach to building stronger communities for children aged 0 to 6 by building on existing strengths.

There great things happening in our communities, but often we don’t notice or we focus on what needs to be fixed, and we miss that more of a ‘good thing’ can lead to less of a ‘bad thing’. The Rural Asset Inventory Strategy is about discovering what we do really well and find ways to spread these great works, especially for our younger citizens, children aged 0-6.

What are our objectives with this project?

1. To develop methods and procedures to gather, analyze and understand the internal and external assets for children ages 0-6
2. To develop a tool to capture the developmental assets of rural communities in collaboration with interested individuals from participating communities.
3. To generate recommendations based on community assets for policy makers and service providers.
4. To develop and information package to support other communities to develop local action strategies.

What can we offer?

Through a Community Initiatives Fund grant, the RAIS resources to support three communities in the rural areas of the Saskatoon Health Region to go through a process of:

1. Providing education and training on Development Assets,
2. establishing a local Steering Committee to guide the project,
3. administering the Rural Asset Inventory Strategy,
4. gathering and sort data collected,
5. hosting small group discussions to review the results of the inventory and facilitate understanding what the data means,
6. hosting Town Hall meetings open to the whole community to discuss the results and begin to build community plans and,
7. implementing actions from the locally devised plans.

The RAIS is an initiative of the Rural Early Year’s Coalition (REYC). The REYC is comprised of representatives from agencies and organizations who provide services to families with young children in rural areas of the Saskatoon Health Region and is committed to embracing an asset-based approach in working with rural communities. Through the RAIS, REYC is looking to partner with communities who are interested in identifying local assets and begin to plan to build on them.

For more information:

Sydney Bell

REYC Convenor &

KidsFirst Community Developer, Primary Health

Phone: 655-5383

Sydney.bell@saskatoonhealthregion.ca

*For more information on Developmental Assets please contact Sydney Bell or visit the Search Institute Website at: http://www.search-institute.org/