Can you have too much success? That’s the question Andrea Watson is asking after a brainstorming weekend that brought several members of the community together to come up with goals for HIV West Yellowhead.

“We got a lot accomplished, but there are too many goals for my liking,” she said. “The group came up with nine, and in our current plan we only have four funding approaches.”

Still, it’s always better to have more ideas than dollars than the other way around, and Watson expects that the HIV-WY board will have to choose a handful of strategic goals from the nine generated last Friday and Saturday (July 28 and 29). The executive director was impressed with the dedication and enthusiasm of the people who turned out for the sessions, which lasted for three hours on Friday evening and ran throughout the day Saturday.

“I’m sure the bad weather helped us out a bit,” she laughed. “We had some really young people from the community, they’re still in high school actually, and it was great to have their input.”

Watson had been hoping that people from outside Jasper might have attended the sessions, but said she was not surprised when none turned up. HIV-WY has responsibility for Hinton, Edson and Whitecourt, and now Watson and her colleagues will be attempting to generate some contributions from those communities.

“We now need to get some input from the rest of the region,” she said. “We’re sending a survey out to our contacts and others and we’ll let them get back to us on their own.”

Another potential source for direction from the rest of West Yellowhead will come when the evaluation report for the recent harm reduction conference is finalized. That event, coordinated by Jasper Adult Learning and HIV-WY, was intended to provide Watson with some ideas about her organizations’ pursuit of harm reduction opportunities outside of Jasper, where the group is well-established.

Those Jasperites that turned up for the strategic planning sessions were eager to see HIV-WY focus on expanding its regional influence, which pleases Watson.

“That’s what we need to do, and that’s how we get more funding.”

None of the nine strategic goals suggested came as a surprise to Watson, although she said some might prove difficult to meet in the next three years.

“One goal that was established was to see us do more work supporting people living with HIV and STIs,” she said. “We don’t do that much at this point, but it’s something we could work towards. It’s pieces like this that are not necessarily appropriate for this upcoming three-year plan, but maybe the next one.”

Once the strategic plan is approved by the HIV-WY board, Watson can start work on the group’s work plan for the next three years. It’s this document that must be reviewed and submitted to the Alberta Community HIV Fund in order for HIV-WY to receive funding. The deadline for that submission is the beginning of December.

“I can’t really start writing the work plan until the strategic plan is in place, but I know what’s going to be included,” Watson said. One thing she’s less certain of is the makeup of the community planning committee, a group of representatives from all four major centres in the West Yellowhead area of responsibility. It’s this group that must review the work plan in October, make recommendations and return it to Watson for editing. While she’s looking for at least one person from each community in the region, Watson said she wouldn’t mind seeing more than one Jasperite on the committee.

“The more the merrier, really,” she said. “I would like to set it up by the end of September at the latest.”

In the meantime, Watson and the rest of the staff and volunteers at HIV-WY will be keeping busy.

This weekend, the group is off to Edson for a massive slo-pitch tournament. The event attracts 236 mixed teams from all across the continent, and has been described by Maxim Magazine as “the biggest f**k fest in North America”.

The plan is for HIV-WY to distribute more than 4,000 condoms to participants, in cooperation with Planned Parenthood and the Aspen Region’s sexual health nurses. The safe-sex squad was denied the right to hand out their prophylactics on the ball diamonds themselves, Watson said. Instead, the groups will be set up in the farmer’s field where the teams are camped.

Closer to home, August 9 will see a sex toy party at the Atha-B, starting at 10 p.m. Featuring a travelling sex toy saleswoman and her “tickle trunk”, the event is intended to show off safe sex toys.

“Women sometimes buy sex toys that are harmful for their bodies,” Watson said. “We’ll be talking about materials, how to clean up and so on.”