Grassroots approach

The more a community participates in grassroots projects the healthier it becomes, says the economic development officer of Aroland First Nation.

More than 70 participants attended the second Northwestern Ontario Bio-Economy Corporation conference at the Victoria Inn on Saturday. The conference focused on entrepreneurship for small, grassroots initiatives for Northwestern Ontario. One of those initiatives was the selling and harvesting of blueberries.

Mark Bell, economic development officer for Aroland First Nation, said his community, which has a population of more than 600, has started to look for ways to support themselves with different types of developments. The harvesting of blueberries was one of the ways they wanted to improve their community.

"In our community we feel it is very important that we start to look at economic development," Bell said. "(Grassroots) projects are nice because they get the community involved. A lot of them are the communities ideas. We're able to development them right from the grassroots, right from the bottom. We have a more bottom up rather than a top down structure and it's nice to do it that way because you're getting the whole community involved.

"More community involvement brings out a healthier community."

Selling blueberries has become a profitable business. One community member was able to sell about $35,000 worth of blueberries for the year. With about 30,000 baskets produced per year, Bell said $30,000 is about average for sales.

He added the number of blueberries picked varied per year because of weather conditions.

Many of the youth pick and sell blueberries themselves. Bell said it’s important to provide youth with those opportunities not only so they stay in their communities but also to stay out of trouble.

"They need something," he said. "I think it is really important to show that (the youth) can succeed and it gives them the confidence for the future and their future endeavours."

Aroland First Nation is also looking at a few community gardening projects, he added.

Natalie Hughes, outreach officer for NOBEC, said they wanted to promote grassroots entrepreneurship in so the youth could see the potential in investing in Northwestern Ontario.

"Due to the current economic climate, a lot of our youth are leaving Ontario and perusing jobs else where," Hughes said. "We want to try and maintain them in the north by promoting the fact that they can not only work a conventional nine to five job. They can also get their own unique innovated ideas off the ground and start their own businesses."

The best way to maintain the economy is by involving the community and grassroots approaches do this far more effectively than larger corporations, she said.