The Trochu Journey

At the one year anniversary of our exciting "Ignite Tour", our town is feeling the impact of the ACE experience. Since our last newsletter reporting, we have seen an active Fall of serious planning, grant applications and fundraising by our pro-active Trails team including individual donations, Town, and corporate/businesses. There are high expectations once the matching grant process is complete!

The Skateboard Park and Family Fun Centre groups are realizing slower momentum, and the benefit of merging all efforts toward making the Trails project a single priority at this time, harnessing all this learning and experience for a future time when these projects are in the works!

The news of our designation as “The Pinkest Little Town in the West” was received in October which recognized the outstanding participation and community involvement in raising the most money during the 14 day "Wild Pink Yonder Ride" for breast cancer. This announcement coincided nicely with the ARPA Jasper Conference where we could share the good news. The Community Building segment was well done by the 11 ACE Communities who contributed their heart-warming stories. I am delighted to see the Trochu Journey six-minute video featured on the ACE Communities website…looks great there!

We have a community gathering booked for January 5, 2011 as a very fitting year- to- the-day reunion where we will have everyone back together for an update and to hear their valuable feedback. Future events are already in the works starting with a New Year’s Eve traditional fireworks display to kick-off what promises to be the best Centennial celebrations ever!

Trochu marks 100 years and we have more community leaders coming forward to help plan this party than ever before. We will update on this as the year unfolds but will just mention that our 2010 ACE Movie in the Park event, promises to be an annual close of school blast for our kids. It is booked to go again as part of the Centennial plans for 2011 and beyond… stay tuned for more exciting plans throughout our big year!

In closing, I think it is worth mentioning that an unprecedented four women ran in the municipal election in Trochu this past fall; two with success at the polls. Personally, I must attribute some of the decision to make this step, to the encouragement and positivity I have felt throughout the ACE experience. Our community, strong and progressive in many ways already, has definitely become even more cohesive, with leadership starting to emerge anew. Our communities will go where we lead and the more tools and skills we can gather and use to this end, the better for all

Update from ACE Leader Val in Trochu

Innisfail Youth Rock!

On October 28^th, 2010 a group of 37 youth and 21 individuals representing organizations working with youth met at the Alliance Church in Innisfail. The purpose was to connect and share, set out priorities, develop youth leadership and work towards building a youth strategy.

The workshop produced a listing of resources available in Innisfail, priorities and bold action steps to move forward. One youth event has already happened and a communication plan for future activities is in the works. Thirty-eight individuals indicated that they would continue working collaboratively towards the priorities. Fantastic work, Innisfail!!!

Here is a vision board from the workshop:

Leduc County's ACE Projects

Congrats to the Leduc County who is moving forward with the final stages of their ACE Communities planning.

For the Community of Warburg, the ACE initiative will be a Fitness Facility enhancement project. This will include enhancing the existing fitness centre in the high school so that it can be used by the wider community. The funding will go toward the purchase of exercise bikes, treadmills, and cross trainers.

The goal is to have the facility open to use by high school students, Village of Warburg residents, and surrounding Leduc County residents. At present the facility is only open to use by the high school students during school hours.

This initiative will help to get the Warburg and Leduc County community more active and engaged through fitness and healthy living. It also provides a place for youth to be active outside of school hours. It can accommodate those youth that have finished high school but still live in the area. It will also accommodate other adults in the community. By providing a facility that all community members can use, they can start to build stronger community leaders and increase the quality of life in Warburg and surrounding areas. With the completion of the enhancement project the facility can also look into the future to provide programs, volunteer opportunities, and youth development through fitness and recreation.

For the Community of Thorsby, the ACE initiative will be modernizing the Thorsby Recreation Complex through the purchase of equipment. The Complex is currently undergoing renovations to their old BMX track and it will become and multipurpose gym area, complete with Dance studio and workout room. The Thorsby seed money will be used to purchase new mats for the multipurpose area to be used for several programs such as gymnastics, cheerleading, yoga, and other fitness programs.

As a result of the purchase of the mats the community will be ready to host more programs that need specialized equipments.

The community will be able to attract more participants to programs and host a variety of programs that have never been possible at the Thorsby Recreation Complex because of a lack of equipment. This will also greatly impact the younger female population of the area as well because they will have the opportunity to partake in an activity that they have been asking for for quite some time.

Way to go, Leduc County! We can't wait to see the final results.

Connection is key in Nanton

NANTON is moving forward under the guidance of their new ACE Coach, Karen Driedger. At a recent ACE meeting, local leaders identified key areas for action in Nanton and discussed how they could work together as community groups and leaders to make Nanton an even better place to live and work.

This process not only kick started community communication, many realized that they shared a common goal of connecting with like-minded individuals and community groups who are interested in enhancing quality of life in their community. Way to go, Nanton! Can't wait to see your next steps.

Vulcan’s ACE Journey

Interested in learning more about the journey that our ACE Communities take? Then check this great story from Vulcan outlining their ACE Journey from 2009-2010. Great work, Vulcan! We can't wait to see what the next year has in store.

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In January 2009 we had our Ignite Tour. The visit ACE Ambassador, Ian Hill went very well. The Town Council, school children, local groups and citizens were all “choppin’ at the bit” to build our community through the ACE program. We held a town meeting to discuss where the citizens would like to focus their attention and handy work. After much discussion three areas came to the forefront. We had a large group interested in upgrading/new pool, others wanted a series of community events that would bring the community together and the last major idea was a way to communicate to the community at large the events that were taking place within our area.

Consensus was that we would begin by putting our efforts behind a pool. Our pool is 33 years old and we knew that the life left in the pool would be short. We had talked to the Town and they were on board with this. We were set to move forward when it was decided by the County of Vulcan and The Town of Vulcan that a deeper investigation into the pool was needed. The Town talked with the County regarding the funds to make some kind of improvements at the pool. This was not to be an easy or speedy process. We were told that we needed to stop moving forward and go sideways for a bit. There needed to be an independent study on the feasibility of new pool vs an overhauled pool. That took the wind out of sails. We know that with the County wanting a study done before they would talk dollars was an understandable way to move forward.

This was a blow to the ACE program in our community because everyone was focused on the pool and it was a tangible way to support our community. So now, a lot of the people who were involved with the pool and ACE were faced with choosing a new project. We had a meeting which turned out to be a small handful of the people. The small group helped to organize the second objective which was to bring about a way to gather the community together in a meaningful way. This led us to our 2nd objective.

We have already begun working on our 2^nd objective and that is to bring the community together in community building experiences. We have created a “Vulcan Concert Series” which is held in the fall and winter months of the year. Were we are bringing local and Canadian performers to town to help Vulcan gain exposure to our culture and heritage of performing arts in a family setting. This has been a huge success in not only exposure for our community citizens but also by the performing artists who have now got Vulcan on their radar as a great place to perform. Artists have requested that in the near future they would like to come back and perform for our community again. We have now begun our second season of the “Vulcan Concert Series” and look to continuing on with this series for a while yet.

We have also hosted our Vulcan Fall Fair on Oct 8^th, 2010. We had only a handful of people at the planning meeting that wanted to see this come about. We set out to figure out what we wanted to happen and then we divided those ideas between the 5 of us to reach out to community members to help make it happen. They came through in a big way. This event brought people from 1 month to 90 years old out to our Rodeo grounds to partake in a corn bust, quilt display, chili cook-off, wagon rides, family dance and many more activities. Through this event we had many people who wanted to be part of ACE activities.

As with all ACE activities, we want to get people interested in helping our with our next activities and as result of our Fall Fair we were approached by a member of the RCMP to work together to put on an event for Dec 31^st 2010, a Family Fun Night”. We also have a Community Block Party in the planning stages.

The New Years Eve - Family Fun Night is well on it way to happening we have found out that not many people want to be involved with meetings so what we did with our core group of people is we set a date, time and cost for the gathering.

We also made a rough outline of what we want to see happen music, entertainment etc. Referring back to the people who signed up for ACE we put the call out for help and have been happy to say that people are coming together to make this event happen in ways that work for them. We have the Fire Department putting on a bonfire, someone has committed to looking after the fireworks, groups are going to help out with providing food and beverages, and community members are helping in other areas.

The community calendar is our 3^rd objective and it went online in April 2009. Groups let the Vulcan & District Recreation office know when they are holding an event and we would then have it added to the website calendar so that everyone and anyone would have 24 hr access to what is happening in the County.

This has been a positive thing in our community and we are working with VBDS to improve on the community calendar to make it more easily accessed to input information on by the users and to make adjustment to the overall appearance.

We are also working with VBDS to create community calendar screens to have around town to improve on the visibility of the community calendar. The need and improved calendar that we are working on will allow people to add their event and I just administrate the information. The calendar will be an ongoing thing that we will tweak as needed.

Our adventures with ACE have been a bit of a roller coaster but the benefits to our community have been numerous. The people who were at first interested in ACE because our focus was going to be the pool have rallied around our other focus areas.

We have gotten to know our neighbours through our planning and through the process of putting on quality events within our community. Many people have commented that Vulcan is working together to put on events that make Vulcan a better place to live, work and especially play. We continue to work on our ACE activities and will continue to work with the town and county with the pool, like I said we were moving sideways with the pool but hopefully we will be moving forward with this community concern in the near future. We look forward to many years of working as community with our citizen, business and groups to maintaining a healthy community lifestyle through our ongoing ACE programs in Vulcan.

Yours Sincerely,

Bonnie Ellis

Director of Vulcan & District Recreation

Lighting Up Longview

Longview is well on their way to lighting up the town with their holiday event, Light Up Longview, on December 5th. This ACE project aims to raise funds for Christmas decorations for the main street as part of Longview's beautification initiatives.

As part of their efforts, the Longview Youth Group collected nearly $1000 through their bottle drive and money has also been raised through the Longview Music and Arts Festival ("Longstock"). Longview is also looking for donors who would like to add to their Memorial tree. Way to go everyone!

To follow Longview's activities, check out their fabulous website: http://www.longviewaceprojects.weebly.com/

And to see their story, as presented recently at the Alberta Recreation and Parks Association's annual conference, click here:

http://longviewaceprojects.weebly.com/volunteer-tributes.html

Things are happening in Wainwright!

Great news for our alumni ACE Community of WAINWRIGHT! They have now officially launching their “Tatanka Trails”. This project entailed planning a secondary signage program for one of their town’s major greenspaces.

The ACE group coordinated a comprehensive study on what the area needed for beautification and it was decided that the funding should go into nine mapping and information signs that would be created by a local contractor. Content for and design of the signs was all developed by the group.

Congrats on the launch Wainwright!

The Parks and Recreation Department of the Town of Wainwright has also applied for $100, 000 in funding through the Pepsi Refresh Program for fixed back seating at our Peace Memorial Multiplex arena!

To vote for Wainwright, see: http://www.refresheverything.ca/search/?q=wainwright