By Ally Dunham

The Federated Women’s Institutes of Ontario (FWIO) has launched a research project to develop a “Rural Voices Network” (RVN) that will involve a broad consultation with rural community members, organizations, and municipalities of Ontario.

Approximately 20 residents of the local area turned out at the Holiday Inn on Nov. 18 for the local conference, to be a part of the “Let Your Voice Be Heard” public forum.

According to RVN, the purpose of the project is to examine what enables rural citizens to participate in the common life of their community, and to identify barriers to rural civic engagement.

Included in this forum was a mingling session, giving people time to ask each other questions, and relay the answers back to the entire group. The forum went on to break-out sessions, questioning each participant individually as well as collectively, of what barriers exist to community involvement and volunteerism.

Many of the responses came back the same for enabling residents to have the opportunity to volunteer and be involved, including supportive families, available time, and a large variety of organizations to be involved with.

Some of the barriers restricting people from becoming involved included not enough time in personal schedule, barriers within the organizations themselves such as having to pay a fee to become part of the group, and the struggles of being accepted into the groups that have been long-standing and are commonly labeled as “impenetrable”.

The small breakout groups came together to go over common themes, and reflect on the individual answers.

“Rural citizens hold a huge wealth, their voice is the key to understanding rural civic engagement. There’s value in building a bridge of communication between the rural citizen, as well as organizational and municipal leaders,” said Manon Germain, RVN project manager.

Some of the expected results of the RVN are to improve understanding of issues and needs as they relate to civic engagement by members in rural communities and to enhance the capacity of the rural volunteer sector to collaborate and network.

Other results are expected to be improvement of understanding of the technological divide between rural and urban communities, as well as identifying viable frameworks to increase rural civic engagement.

The RVN project is a one-year research project operating from April 2011 to March 2012, and will result in the development of a survey using questions, themes and issues discovered at the forums, to build the survey.

The survey, anticipated to see 10,000 recipients will then help build a final report and a proposal outlining recommended models for community engagement.

To add your voice, you can go online to www.ruralvoicesnet

work.ca or e-mail info@ruralvoicesnet

work.ca.