The Hinton Business Vitality Initiative keeps rolling

After last Wednesday’s meetings, the Hinton Business Vitality Initiative (BVI) has moved onto the next stage where small groups of residents will put the selected goals into action.

According to Renee LaBoucane, economic development manager for the Town of Hinton, about 50 people attended last week’s public meeting.

The meeting, which ran for three hours, gave participants an opportunity to prioritize short-term initiatives for the town. 

The initiatives were developed by the Centre for Innovative and Entrepreneurial Leadership (CIEL) after the 100-question BVI survey conducted last November and some qualitative focus groups they had conducted. 

“They identified some short-term activities and then we did kind of a reality check, to see if there were others, or ones that they didn’t agree on, and the group did add some that weren’t on that list,” LaBoucane said. “From there, people had five dots and could go put their dots on the ones ... that were the most important to them.”

After deliberation, the group established five goals that they would put into action within the year. “We wanted to have something that was achievable and that could be done within a year so we stuck with five courses of action,” said LaBoucane.

“The five actions were: to encourage more business and community collaboration; to try and engage more than ‘the same ten people’ syndrome, what we could do to engage more of the community in community projects; marketing Hinton, in terms of tourism; to encourage youth entrepreneurship through identifying untapped businesses, recreation and educational opportunities for youth; and a shop local initiative.”

Each action was assigned to a “lead” person who is responsible for contacting and inviting people that are appropriate to the goal, said LaBoucane. 

For people who missed the event and would like to get involved the BVI, LaBoucane is happy to refer Hintonites to the correct person. She can be reached at 780-865-6004.