The Creative Communities Blog is pleased to feature a guest blog by Queen's Law student Bob Parker.  Through funding from the North & Central Hastings and South Algonquin CFDC, Bob was able to work with local businesses to help improve their marketing expertise.

This past summer I was fortunate enough to be able to work with some great businesses and people in beautiful Comfort Country.

My work was conducted through an internship with The Monieson Centre at Queen’s School of Business, established in partnership with the four municipalities that make up Comfort Country: Madoc, Marmora, Stirling and Tweed. Broadly stated, the objective of the internship was to promote economic development in the Comfort Country area. This was accomplished by working with local businesses in a consultation capacity and helping them establish clear marketing objectives for them to follow in expanding their business operations.

To start, I analyzed the ‘Business Retention and Expansion Report’ that was concluded in February of 2009. It soon became clear that the most significant issue facing the majority of businesses in the area was establishing a strong marketing plan to grow their business and become self-sustaining. With this determined, the next step was to interview local businesses to understand how I could help them.  I learned very quickly that rural businesses are tired of people asking questions and want tangible results. As such I deduced that the best way to help these businesses was to work closely with them to develop marketing plans for their respective businesses.

Another challenge involved trying to understand the specific concerns of local businesses and provide solutions that accommodate those concerns. The main challenge that stemmed from this was that rural businesses can sometimes be adverse to change. However, when we sat down and discussed the advantages of a viable marketing plan and the benefits that could be achieved from marketing initiatives they were very excited about moving forward. Seeing the excitement of these rural business owners was definitely one of the highlights of my internship.  Another highlight was the gratitude they showed me for providing marketing strategies their businesses could capitalize on. Also, getting to work directly in Comfort Country and getting to know some of the local merchants on a personal level was a rewarding experience. All four municipalities that comprise Comfort Country are very picturesque and the people are very friendly, which made for one of the best working environments I have had the privilege of working in.

One of the greatest strengths I saw in Comfort Country is the communities’ willingness to work hard to promote economic development and their genuine interest in new strategies to achieve this. This is definitely a lesson other rural communities can take away from those in Comfort Country: to be open to new ideas in economic development and to have the corresponding work ethic to make it possible. Further, all four municipalities of Comfort Country have wonderful overall aesthetics, and this strength offers them continued opportunities for future growth.

In the end, my time in Comfort Country was invaluable and the area definitely has the right people to make Comfort Country a rural economic success story. I am sure I have not visited Comfort Country for the last time and I look forward to seeing the fruit of ongoing economic development in future visits.

Comments

Add New Search

David Phipps  - Director, Research Services & Knowledge Exchange   |2009-11-22 09:01:55 We also have an intern program in our KM Unit at York. Interns work with community groups (sometimes government offices). I have for a while tried to clearly articulate the difference between knowledge mobilization and university based consulting? Any thoughts? David Reply

Write comment
Name:
Email:
Title:
	Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.

Powered by !JoomlaComment 3.26

3.26 Copyright (C) 2008 Compojoom.com / Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."