Ashleigh Weeden (PhD Student, University of Guelph) shared insights on rural innovation and community story-telling with the Community Foundations of Canada's Rural Philanthropy Learning Community during an intensive webinar on January 10th, 2019 alongside Arthur Bull from the Rural Communities Foundation of Nova Scotia. The webinar focused on rural innovation, the role of philanthropy and its connection to resilient rural communities.
For more informat...
Graduate students in the Rural Planning and Development program at the University of Guelph will be able to take a course this winter focused on building healthy rural communities. Dr. Wayne Caldwell is teaching an online course titled, "Healthy Rural and Small Town Communities". The course builds on recent research and publications, such as the Healthy Rural Communities Toolkit. As part of the course, Dr. Gibson shared perpsectives from recent r
Alex Petric's recent thesis is now available online! You can download Beyond the Smart City: Assessing Open Data in Rural Ontario from the Univeristy of Guelph's Atrium website: https://atrium.lib.uoguelph.ca/xmlui/handle/10214/14704.
Congratulations to Alex Petric for successfully defending his Master of Science in Rural Planning and Development thesis titled "Beyond the Smart City: Accessing Open Data in Rural Ontario". Alex's research explored if rural Ontario municipalities were current pursuing, or interested in pursuing, open data initiatives. The electronic version of the thesis will be available shortly - check back soon!
On November 30th, the Regional Forum on Rural Newcomer Integration was a great example of a region coming together to improve newcomer integration throughout rural communities. The Regional Forum focussed on equipping employers with the knowledge and tools to be effective in attracting and retaining newcomer employees.
The room was full of municipal staff looking to support employers, employers who had previously been successful at newcomer integration to
How can a community or region build a welcoming community? A community whereby new immigrants and newcomers feel welcome to move into, become engaged with local businesses, and contribute to the sustainability of the community. Based on experiences elsewhere, at the core is partnerships, dialogue, and commitment. During the Western Region Workforce Forum, Dr. Ryan Gibson shared perspectives on how rural communities can adopt welcoming community s...
The Ontario College of Agriculture at the University of Guelph recently celebrated the achievements of students. Congratulations goes out to the following:
Mallory Smith (2nd year Rural Planning and Development student) for receiving the Rural Planning Travel Grant and the Rural Planning and Development Alumni ScholarshipTimothy Hunting (2nd year Rural Planning and Development student) for receiving the Rural Planning Travel Grant
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Ashleigh Weeden, a PhD Student in the Rural Studies program, has been selected as one of 25 emerging scholars from around the world to participate in the 2019 ERSA/OECD Winter School at the Trento Centre for Local Development in Trento, Italy in January 2019.
As a highly competitive intensive program, the ERSA Winter School, in collaboration with the OECD Spatial Productivity Lab, provides PhD students and young researchers with the very latest advances...
What if communities had an alternative source of funds to facilitate service delivery? Could these funds compensate for the challenges confronted related to large distances and low densities? Would the chronic challenges of service-withdrawal from the abdication of provincial and federal governments be overcome? How would access to alternative funding change the dynamics of rural sustainability, if at all? These are the questions Dr. Ryan Gibson'
On November 8, 2018, Ashleigh Weeden (PhD Student - University of Guelph) delivered a workshop at the Canadian Open Data Summit in Niagara Falls, Ontario that encouraged participants to rethink what they think they know about rural communities. The session focused on core principles critical to modern rural development in the digital era – place, people, and policy – and emphasized the importance of rural communities to Canada’s digital agenda as the natio
