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Nipawin BID brings non-profits together to promote events

Community events are not only part of the glue that bring Nipawin residents together, they also attract visitors to the town to spend money, said a Nipawin business organization.

Community events are not only part of the glue that bring Nipawin residents together, they also attract visitors to the town to spend money, said a Nipawin business organization.

“It’s good for business, having community events,” said Carmen Drapeau, promotions and marketing co-ordinator with the Nipawin Business Improvement District. “It’s good for the town of Nipawin.”

That’s one of the reasons Drapeau and the district held a meeting at the Nipawin Legion Jan. 31 that brought the town’s non-profits and volunteer organizations together. At the meeting, the approximately 50 participants mapped out all of the events they plan to do this year, discussed ways to co-operate to improve their events and discussed ways to promote the town’s events to the general public.

“The most important part of it is to engage, to get all these groups together and get them talking,” she said.

Drapeau said when she was trying to promote the town’s events with the district’s info kiosk last summer, there was no single place to find out what was going on.

“One of the things I found when I was trying to find information for events was that I really had to dig for it,” she said. “I had to go to all of the bulletin boards.”

So she talked about the issue with her co-workers at the district and thought back to the last place she lived, Tumbler Ridge, B.C. The non-profits in that community would meet each other periodically, a practice that developed during the tough times when the town’s principal employees, the coal mines, were closed. While Nipawin is nowhere near that situation, Drapeau thought the town would benefit from the practice.

The promotions co-ordinator said the information gathered at the meeting would be shared with other non-profits.

“We’ll type up the information and send it to the people who were here – and probably all of the groups we have contacts for.”

It will also go to the town office, where they can use it to update their online community events calendar.

The participants were enthusiastic about having another meeting between the town’s non-profits, probably in a bigger venue. The date is yet to be determined.