CHALLENGE
The Société de l’Acadie du Nouveau-Brunswick (SANB) is a key stakeholder engaged with the Government of New Brunswick and a major French-speaking player at the national level. The organization plays a leading political role in advocating language rights and promoting the well-being and development of Acadians in every essential area of society.
The SANB has teamed up with MU Conseils to orchestrate a bold, mobilizing process aimed at deploying a roadmap for community development: the 2022-2028 Community Strategic Plan (CSP). Unlike organizational strategic planning, a CSP delivers outcomes by way of coordinated actions taken within a self-consistent whole, but above all by combining multiple actions taken within an ever-growing network of contributors. In short, the following objectives underpinned the proposed challenge:
- Strengthening solidarity among the Acadian community organizations of New Brunswick;
- Working differently to achieve unprecedented, attainable and measurable outcomes;
- Reaching out to and mobilizing a diversity of new players;
- Rethinking and stimulating collective empowerment;
- Daring to build the future with pride, conviction and audacity.
PROPOSED SOLUTION
The process proposed by MU Conseils as an integral part of the outcomes has been designed and piloted with the following principles in mind:
- Leading a broad consultation process to mobilize a wide range of stakeholders;
- Ensuring that the views of community members are heard and provided regular feedback during the plan development process;
- Collectively identifying intentions over which the community has a genuine power of action or influence;
- Instead of reinventing the wheel, finding the right balance between new contents to be developed and existing contents already in the organizations’ strategic plans;
- Avoiding overburdened intentions;
- Adopting a results-based approach;
- Showing flexibility and adapting the process to the community’s specific context.
RESULTS
- More than 400 people mobilized through the diagnostic survey;
- Five theme-based “Parle-Ouères” (public forums) held;
- Over 40 community organizations significantly involved at every stage of the process;
- Greatly enhanced synergy among community organizations;
- Adoption of an engaging community development roadmap: the 2022-2028 CSP, available on a microsite created by MU Conseils: www.destination-2028.com.
