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UPPER ST. JOHN RIVER VALLEY INITIATIVE:
CENTREVILLE ASSET MAPPING REPORT
By
Sophie-Michèle Cyr and Cheryl Ripley
Falls Brook Centre
Submitted to Centreville community and village council
Friday October 31, 2008
Upper St. John River Valley Initiative – Asset Mapping Workshop Report, 2008 2
Table of Contents
About the workshop: ..................................................................... 3
Workshop Agenda ........................................................................................................ 3
Participation .................................................................................................................. 3
Notes from the session:.................................................................. 4
Key assets mentioned in the asset mapping exercise: ................................................ 4
Identified threats to assets: .......................................................................................... 6
Supporting a strong community:................................................................................. 7
Strategizing the future.................................................................................................. 7
Where do we go from here? ......................................................................................... 8
Report prepared by Sophie-Michèle Cyr & Cheryl Ripley - Falls Brook Centre 2
Upper St. John River Valley Initiative – Asset Mapping Workshop Report, 2008 3
Background:
In the framework of the Upper St. John River Valley Initiative project, Julia
Cammack, a business owner from Centreville, asked Falls Brook Centre to deliver a
community asset mapping workshop in her area. This process gives community members
the opportunity to gather together, asses the strengths and threats within their community
and describe a working force that will help plan for the future. We set a date for October
30th, 2008 and started to produce posters, pamphlets and public announcements, making
phone calls around the village to invite a diverse group of stakeholders. There was a great
interest expressed by many community members. Below is what turned out to be a very
exciting and productive session.
About the workshop:
The community asset mapping workshop took place on October 30th 2008 from
18h00 to 20h30 at the Elk’s Club Hall on 3135 Main Street in Centreville. The session
was facilitated by Sophie-Michèle Cyr and co-facilitated by Cheryl Ripley.
Workshop Agenda
18h00-18h15 Welcome
18h15-19h00 Introduction:
• Project overview; goals and objectives
• Community resiliency & collaboration
• Asset Mapping uses
• Introducing asset mapping process
• Tina Goguen: Early Child Development and Parenting Centre (put
paper chart up for interest)
19h00-19h30 Asset mapping exercise (in break out groups):
• Identifying assets, threats and supports
19h30-19h45 Nutrition break
19h45-21h00 Group exercise – identifying champions and partners
• Focusing on one matter
• Where do we go from here?
21h00 Adjournment
Participation
This workshop targeted Centreville and surrounding region. It was advertised in two
local news papers and posters and pamphlets were distributed around the Village of
Centreville and Florenceville as the people from Centreville often visit Florenceville for
different services. Thanks to a directory provided by the Village of Centreville we were
able to contact by phone the majority of the businesses in the area and invite them
personally. Although there was a great interest expressed from all over the community,
about half of the interested parties actually participated in the workshop (which is
happens frequently the case). The people participating are usually the ones that are
willing to be part of the active follow up that needs to happen to move the identified
agenda forward. This certainly turned out to be the case with the group of nine people
that took part in the workshop.
Report prepared by Sophie-Michèle Cyr & Cheryl Ripley - Falls Brook Centre 3
Upper St. John River Valley Initiative – Asset Mapping Workshop Report, 2008 4
List of participants:
NAME ORGANIZATION HOME COMMUNITY
Burtt, Teresa Village of Centreville Centreville
Cammack, Julia Grain Effects Greenfield
Davenport, Kathryn Village of Centreville Centreville
Early Child Development &
Goguen, Tina Lakeville
Parenting Centre
Carleton Pioneer Credit
Gorman, Sandra Millville
Union
Local Valley Beef, also
MacLeod, Cedric involved in the NB youth Mactaquac
Farmer Forum
Nye, Lottie Country Hair Design Centreville
Grama’s Bake
Thomas, Susan Centreville
Shop/Restaurant
Notes from the session:
Sophie-Michèle first introduced the project, the asset mapping approach and Tina
Goguen made a short presentation to introduce the project she is working on. Early Child
Development and Parenting Centre is an initiative from a group of parents that want to
create a centre where they could access family and child services offered by different
groups. It would also be a hub for delivering a diversity of workshops and networking
around the subject of young children. The initiative would benefit young families and
target children aged 0-5 years old, allowing early childhood development to lead to
school success in the children’s later years. The centre would like to see the creation of
an advisory group that would be a community driven pilot project. There is funding
available for certain pilot projects that are linked to schools, however, this group is not
eligible for funding because it is not linked to a school. The proposed Centreville centre
location is at McCauley’s Transport and is supported by the village.
Key assets mentioned in the asset mapping exercise:
We asked participant to identify the most important assets in their community. The
assets can be physical (buildings), economic (kind of business), cultural (events), people
(skills and values) and natural (lakes, resources and landscape) related. Below is what the
participants identified.
Social aspects of the community (values, skills and events):
• The people
• Help your neighbour attitude
• People that work together
• Diverse community
• Entrepreneurial spirit
• Maritime work ethic
• Great community involvement
Report prepared by Sophie-Michèle Cyr & Cheryl Ripley - Falls Brook Centre 4
Upper St. John River Valley Initiative – Asset Mapping Workshop Report, 2008 5
• Prideful community
• Churches (3 in the village) and church groups (diverse denomination)
• Community theatre
• School groups and sports
• Volunteers - Summer Fest
• Tractor pull
• Many social aspects: Elk’s Club, Royal Purple, Legion members (Florenceville)
• Canoeing in spring
Location:
• Placement to US (border town)-exports
• Proximity to Trans Canada as a blessing and a curse
• Other communities close by
Infrastructure and services:
• Fire department
• Post office
• Fernand Michaud’s apartments
• The community school (K-8)
• Recreation possibilities from school: soccer field, rugby and track
• Daycare Centre
• Well maintained Senior’s apartment complex
• Village Council
• Outdoor pool
• Available rent space for new businesses
• Railway
• Great skidoo trails
• Credit Union
• Early Child Development and Parental Centre
Businesses:
• Businesses with many years of experience and fairly new ones
• Businesses that employ more then 10 people
• Big business isn’t that big
• Potato farmers: provide jobs on school break and seasonal work
• Small in-home businesses
• Chamber of commerce (donations, active business in community)
• Shopping, boutiques, restaurants, hardware
• Manufacturer’s
Environnemental:
• Nature (forest)
• Wealth of natural resources
• Presqu’Ile stream
Report prepared by Sophie-Michèle Cyr & Cheryl Ripley - Falls Brook Centre 5
Upper St. John River Valley Initiative – Asset Mapping Workshop Report, 2008 6
The participants said these assets are important for them because it is these assets that
make them what they are as a community. All agreed that within the Centreville area
there was a strong sentiment of pride expressed through a community and neighbourhood
feeling. The group acknowledged Centreville’s strong business ethic with recognition
that business prosperity is strongly linked to the proximity to the U.S. border. They were
generally surprised by the plethora of assets compiled from each residents list. The
participants were surprised with the number of strengths their community had to offer.
One participant said that they needed to add the forestry industry as an asset even if there
is no big mills in the area, many small mills and forest operators are sitting idle.
Because of the large number of assets identified, it was decided to narrow down this
list to what they identified as being the most important assets; the assets they needed to
secure for the future, and grouping the ones that were compatible. Here is what this list
looks like:
• The people: Help your neighbour attitude and prideful community
• Placement to the U.S.
• Maritime work ethic
• The Centreville community school K-8 and recreation (theatre and sports
related infrastructures included)
• Businesses: Potato farms, business that helps others, big business are not
that big (Chamber of commerce)
• Presqu’Ile stream (Nature)
• Available space for new businesses
• Daycare centre
It is around this smaller list of assets to secure for the future that the participants
identified the threats to their community and how they could organize to better support
and build resiliency for the future.
Identified threats to assets:
We asked participants to identify what they thought was threatening these assets and
the long term prospects for their communities. Below is what the participants identified.
• Globalization
• Out migration and youth leaving
• Lack of availability in school
• Diverging of traffic (signage)
• Pot holed roads
• The decreasing value of Canadian dollar
• Community linkage to potatoes
• Diminution of work ethic
• Aging of population
When the threats were listed there was a discussion about the drop in population that
the Centreville community has seen over the years. It was mentioned that about 29 years
ago the school had around 400 students. However, the student body is presently at about
280 students. It was also mentioned that the aging of the population can be associated to
Report prepared by Sophie-Michèle Cyr & Cheryl Ripley - Falls Brook Centre 6
Upper St. John River Valley Initiative – Asset Mapping Workshop Report, 2008 7
the out migration of young people. One participant sees a flood of young people returning
home to the region when there is a challenge or crisis elsewhere, but wonders how the
community can accommodate for those returning workers. The dependency upon the
potato industry was recognized as a threat to the community as changes in the potato
industry and farming could have detrimental effects.
Supporting a strong community:
Here, we asked participants to point out what needed to be done to keep the
communities strong and healthy. Speaking of supports, the group was very interested in
continuing developing the community from the grassroots level. Here are the strengths
identified by the participants:
• Support local businesses
• Jobs for youth
• Job fair (showcasing local businesses) for the high school students; to let them be
aware of the skills needed and to develop those skills to sustain future planning
and encourage them to stay in the region.
• Training and retraining for job skills
• Promotion of the area and the quality of life it has to offer
• Working together to create jobs
• Create a cooperative
• Need for entrepreneurial skills, need to show people what is here (sustain their
entrepreneur skills)
• Promoting what we have and building on that
• Keeping community involved in what is here
• Igniting community pride and sharing assets
• Community approach to education: Skills and entrepreneurial
• Start at home
Most participants came to the meeting to see what the community outlook was by
other community members. Participants expressed that they saw potential in the rural
area and a desire to move forward to find solutions by working together.
Strategizing the future
The following are ideas the group brainstormed to concretize the supports they feel
are needed and accessible to their community and different ways to get more people
involved in their initiative:
• They thought that there was no tool in the community to inform people about
job availability, etc. There was a strong commitment by the group to have
local community businesses be the base in fulfilling the rural potential of the
area. Creating a job bank or a Temp Agency, matching up job offers and the
people needing a job.
• To have a job fair in the community school where local businesses could
showcase themselves to the students and tell them exactly what it is that they
are looking for in employees and how the students can develop those skills to
return to the community and take up a local position.
Report prepared by Sophie-Michèle Cyr & Cheryl Ripley - Falls Brook Centre 7
Upper St. John River Valley Initiative – Asset Mapping Workshop Report, 2008 8
• Embedding a “sense of home” into the youth before they leave could possibly
ensure there return. Encourage family gatherings like Harvest Dinners and
other community events.
• One participant sees opportunity for Centreville to play a major role in bio-
energy sectors, co-generation, bio-mass, wood, as well as opportunities in
carbon offsets.
• Uniting the community around food, supporting local business. Exercising the
possibility of local farmers providing goods to Steven’s FRESH MART for
example.
• Farmers Market
• Creating a committee with a strong chair and consistent meetings for a
proactive community approach. Professionals of the Centreville area would
gather together to discuss, solve and move forward with different projects,
programs, fundraisers, etc. that the community wants to see. It could follow
the idea of a Community Support Group and could carry out things like Meals
on Wheels.
• Expanding the community newsletter to the outlying areas of the Village of
Centreville in order to educate, share information and to spread the word
among the community of Centreville. The Village newsletter could include
job availability, links to the potential Temp Agency/Job directory and list of
services and providers. One participant exclaimed, “They [the community]
can’t use it if they don’t know its here.” It could help to recruit more
volunteers by listing all the possibilities.
• Creation of a network through the valley so that the Centreville community
could network with other communities of the valley, collaborate, share and
move forward. (Falls Brook Centre is interested in helping with that as we
already have partners along the valley)
Where do we go from here?
The group unanimously agreed that the Asset Mapping session was a step in the
right direction, opening dialogue between diverse groups of community members. To
continue with future planning the participants mentioned a desire to contact community
members from the Elk’s Club, different church groups and Steven of the Fresh Mart, as
some new people to invite to the upcoming sessions. It was decided that the next meeting
would have the goal of prioritizing the future planning ideas put forward during the asset
mapping session and that each participant would commit to try to bring three more
community members to the next session.
This workshop created a strong feeling of discovery which the participants want
now to share with their fellow community members. All participants are interested in
pursuing and following up on the identified goals. Giving the strong interest of the group
we felt the need to adjourn the workshop by setting another meeting date to carry on with
the discussion and come up with a specific project to start with.
The next Centreville meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, November 25th,
2008 at 6pm at the Elk’s Club and Sophie-Michèle Cyr agreed to
facilitate the meeting.
Report prepared by Sophie-Michèle Cyr & Cheryl Ripley - Falls Brook Centre 8
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