Community Conversations in the Digby Area

World Cafe Events – our Community Conversations

The World Cafe events are a series of conversations, held in local communities across the Digby area. This idea came after we shared the results from the Digby survey at our larger community gathering in February 2019. It was evident that in order to better understand the 9 themes identified in our survey, and how they show up in communities across the Digby area, that we would need to host conversations with the folks who live there. We knew there were gaps in our results, and we knew we could reach more people in all communities, this was our way of doing that. 

From the 9 themes, three priority areas were identified – employment and the economy, the environment and health care. Turning the Tide recruited and supported a team of 12 Community Ambassadors to host a World Café in their community. The role of a Community Ambassador was to host the event, pick the date and time of the event, choose a venue, and invite community members to come along. 

Each World Café hosted table discussions on the three priority areas. The data collected from these events will help inform the direction of Turning the Tide’s future work. Results will be shared back to all the communities of the Digby area in hopes that community members will get involved, will find ways to build upon the great work already happening in their community, and will encourage collaboration across communities. 

These events have been a great opportunity to hear how the themes share similarities across communities, but also an opportunity to see how issues affect unique communities in different ways. Attendees at the events have included residents of all ages, organizations and community groups as well as local government and business. 

To date, Turning the Tide has hosted 14 events and have one more event to go at the Bear River First Nation Cultural Centre, the date is to be determined. The World Café events will wrap up in March and we will share back our findings and learnings with all communities later this year. 

We have enjoyed our time at all the World Café events. From these events we have formed early Theme Teams and are hoping future working groups will begin to form. We are asking interested community members to contact us about joining a Theme Team, or to continue to support Turning the Tide through information sharing and positive communication of what is happening in your community.