The First-Ever Our Amazing Place Southwest New Brunswick Unites NBers In Purpose

The first ever Our Amazing Place Southwest New Brunswick competition was a one-day friendly race across Southwest New Brunswick in which 13 teams playing for different local charities were challenged to learn about the communities they call home along the way, beginning in Lepreau Falls while making stops in Blacks Harbour, Beaver Harbour, St. George and St. Stephen before ending the day in Bayside.

"The Our Amazing Place event challenges have had each participant take on leadership roles, and to collaborate, and to participate in shared decision-making and problem-solving," said organizer Kim Reeder. "This event is a small scale version of what we need to do as a larger region – and we’re having a blast doing it. Some of the event challenges faced today, like speaking in a First Nation language different than what we’re used to, maybe make us feel a little vulnerable but allow us to use the experience to honour the nation whose land we occupy. We had a number of challenges which highlighted our relationship with our past and the natural environment." She said that this helps us remember that we must take care of nature as it takes care of us. 

There were event challenges related to transportation, to our newcomer communities, to nature, to our rural economies, to rising costs, to our seniors population. They help us develop a better understanding of community needs and resources. Some event tasks had us remember the past – we visited war memorials, monuments to those who first stood
firm against slavery in British North America, remembrances to fishermen and family lost at sea – these are all parts of who we are…and the intent was to also remember these lessons associated with these events – and bring them forward into present-day decision-making."

The Southwest NB Community Capacity and Resilience team created the Our Amazing Place event to help build community capacity, which really just means heightening people's ability as a community to take action and navigate change successfully.

The emergency management team within the province learned that New Brunswickers didn’t have relationships in place so they weren't prepared for emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic and floods. During and after these stressful events, new problems developed, and our already-existing issues became worse.

That said, New Brunswickers also experienced good news stories during hard times, and it was learned that the successes tended to be community-based ideas and responses (not a one-size-fits-all approach). The government recognized that each region is unique and, in areas where people knew each other well and had lots of practice working together, they were able to recover better and faster. In other words, local people know best: what will work, and what won’t work in their own communities.

"With these lessons in hand, the government of New Brunswick set up a new branch – the Community Capacity and Resilience Branch within the department of Justice and Public Safety - that’s the Department that has a lead role in emergency management," said Our Amazing Place organizer Kim Reeder. "And the new Community Capacity and Resilience branch was set up to support local people in establishing steering committees throughout the province to work on building place-based responses to improve quality of life and increase our ability to adapt to change and recover from emergencies. And that's how the 'Our Amazing Place' event was born--it is a part of a community-based solution to increase our ability as a region, to build good and trusting relationships, to increase our collaboration, to share knowledge, skills and strengths."