Aboriginal Recreation Summit

I chose to read an article from the Alberta Sweetgrass newspaper entitled “Summit provides insight for Aboriginal recreation leaders.”  This article summarizes the summit that was held for Aboriginal recreation leaders of Alberta to discuss the positives, negatives and objectives for the Aboriginal communities.  One of the major components discussed in this article is that they identified what strengths they were bringing to the Aboriginal community through recreation.  Examples of this are that they are providing the community with ways to increase health benefits and are reducing alcohol, drug and violence related problems.  Another major component from this summit was that they were able to bring up specific concerns that each was coming across in their respective communities.  Examples of these include declining volunteers, reduced resources and the lack of coaches and officials to help run activities.  This could prove to be very beneficial for all of the communities involved in this summit because they would have the opportunity to discuss different ways of resolving problems in each individual community.  This summit for the Aboriginal communities followed many steps of the community development framework discussed in class.  They were able to bring together a small group of leaders where they were able to share the strengths and successes in each of their communities, discuss priorities and develop strategies on how to take action against some of the problems.  I believe that by following the basic framework for community development, the Aboriginal communities in Alberta will be able to continue finding ways to improve their recreational programs by getting more people involved in coaching and volunteering. 

Community development can be defined as bringing a group of people together who share common cultural needs and desires working together as a whole to better their community and achieve their goals.  This Aboriginal summit shows many similarities, for example they brought many community leaders together in order discuss potential ways to improve their own respective communities and resolve problems that have turned up.  Secondly this summit shows that by following a community development framework, communities will be able to identify all of their strengths, weaknesses and ways to improve.   

The leaders of this summit had stated that they wished to have another meeting set up in the near future and I believe that this would be very benificial for recreation in their communities.  It will take time to improve on all of the weaknesses brought up in this summit but if the leaders are committed in helping their communities progress will happen. 

Brent Washenfelder



Sources: https://docs.google.com/a/aceleaders.ca/fileview?id=0B3pKQajHE5jJMjViMmRjOGUtNjliOS00ZmVjLWEzYjUtOTMzNTY2YmEyNzY1&hl=en&ndplr=1