Business growth, improving local health services, and retaining youth and newcomers are all critical challenges facing rural areas on both sides of the Atlantic. While the size of the challenges varied, the need and urgency of response were consistently mentioned.
Category: RDI
Throughout rural areas in Ireland, 2014 legislation requires local governments to team up with economic and social development agencies. The steering committee of this new Local Community Development Committee is dominated by citizens and some elected officials.
BRANDON, MB – The Rural Development Institute (RDI) at Brandon University (BU) has released a report into strategies rural communities use to grow their population. This research provides insight into what growth strategies and assets are used by rural communities with growing and declining populations.
BRANDON, MB – New research led by the Rural Development Institute (RDI) at Brandon University (BU) explores settlement services available to newcomers in 29 rural areas and centres across Western Canada (British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba). The project, entitled Immigration Settlement Services and Gaps in Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s Western Region, inventoried immigration settlement services and identified opportunities for improvement and partnerships that exist to better serve newcomers in rural areas.
BRANDON, MB – Rural Works! A Rural Policy Think Tank held at the Keystone Centre in Brandon, Manitoba in November, 2014 started a conversation about designing a successful future for rural Manitoba zeroing in on economic development.
Brandon, MB – The Rural Development Institute (RDI) at Brandon University (BU) has released a report into the growth opportunities from innovation in the bulk food processing industry in Manitoba. This research fills an important gap in understanding how innovation is achieved in this industry.
Brenda LePage, Western Diversification, spoke to the need of investing in rural areas. Others on this opening panel at the OECD modern rural policy conference spoke on the need to have integrated policy with rural and urban areas.
Rural communities are more than sites of extraction, they are sites of shared values with national significance. Dr. Koster, Lakehead University, moderated five presenters from Canada, Chile, Finland, and Japan.
On April 15, 2015 the Southwest Regional Development Corp hosted their AGM. They are making progress on business succession and rural innovation. RDI helps to bring focus to these two strategic directions.