Thunder Bay summit seeks solutions for the post COVID-19 recovery

Thunder Bay's most-pressing, post-pandemic challenges — and some possible solutions to them — were the focus of a two-day summit this week.

The Better is Possible: Community Recovery Summit brought together representatives of non-profits, businesses, and government at the Superior Inn (formerly the Victoria Inn).

Albert Brule, CEO of the United Way of Thunder Bay and one of the summit's organizers, said Monday was dedicated to discussing issues and brainstorming ways to address them, while day two was about coming up with actual plans.

"There were in total, I think, 12 topics that we were focused on [Monday], ranging from homelessness and food insecurity to youth at risk to healthy aging," Brule said. "So having talked about some some ideas, some potential solutions for addressing those challenges, our groups are working on measurable concrete initiatives."

Mike Belliveau, the chair of the Thunder Bay Community Foundation, called the summit an important event for Thunder Bay.

"We have a very large number of not-for-profits that work in a socioeconomic space that, in essence, have many points of intersection," he said. "We're looking to try and take advantage of a dialogue that starts to break down the barriers around collaboration, and more synthesizing of the resources."

"At the end of the day it's pretty clear that there's really minimal opportunity to see increases in resources coming from federal, provincial or municipal sources,' Belliveau said. "It's basically incumbent upon the players in the space to work smarter not harder." 

Brule said part of the process will be following-up with participants in the future, after the summit has wrapped up.

"We want to help bring them forward," he said. "As an example, the United Way of Thunder Bay will be inviting organizations and groups that have developed a project or an initiative out of the summit to come back to us, and we'll look at it for potential funding, we'll look at it for potential collaboration with other funders."

"We'll look to see if we can provide some other supports to help move that initiative along."

Belliveau said that follow-through after the summit is over will be important.

"One of the challenges that you always face when you have an event like this is, people are very enthusiastic going through the exercise and then  once you get back to your regular day-to-day, you somewhat lose sight of of those next steps, those action plans and activities and expectations," he said. "The leaders of this initiative will have to continue to facilitate people to not lose sight of what they committed to, if you will, in terms of the next steps and look for that kind of progress."

Penny Belluz, director of operations with Teleco, and a board member with Our Kids Count, said it's important that businesses help address community issues, alongside non-profits.

"There's a lot of people who are suffering and it's really hard to get services, so if we can come together to brainstorm and find better ways to serve our community, then I think that's a positive for everybody," she said.