Connecting Communities to Nature: The “Hub” Model

16 Dec 2020

By Ryan MacLean, Volunteer Coordinator

When I started with the Nature Trust in the summer of 2018, we were in the process of securing our 96th conservation land. It was so exciting to see the impact that conservation could have in protecting a beloved community swimming hole and hiking trail at Pennant River, ensuring that future generations could enjoy it, too. Fast forward two and a half years and the Nature Trust now protects over 125 conservation lands across Nova Scotia – special places for communities across our beautiful province. In two short years, our conservation land network grew by nearly 25%!

As you may know, the vast majority of our land stewardship work is done by a dedicated group of volunteers called Property Guardians. They are our eyes and ears (and hearts!) on the ground. The original model for the program was to assign a single volunteer (or in some cases a few volunteers for sites with high recreational activity) to a conservation land for them to care for. They would visit the property at least once annually, submit monitoring reports and occasionally take on some stewardship work if the property required it.

As our conservation lands network has grown, so too has our Property Guardians program – in two years we’ve gone from about 40 active guardians to over 150! It became clear in 2019 that a new model would be needed to address the growing needs of our most popular volunteer program. Enter: Engagement Organizing.

What is Engagement Organizing?

Engagement Organizing: the “Snowflake Model”

Engagement Organizing is an approach that strives to marry organizing, technology, and a culture of developing leadership in others. It originates from the world of politics, where it was implemented to get the word out about candidates and campaign platforms. It is a distributed leadership model (also known as a “snowflake model”) that strives to create groups of people who are motivated by a shared goal and they work together to reach that goal.

Through generous funding and mentoring from Nature Canada, the Nature Trust has been able to implement our own version of Engagement Organizing with the creation of community-based volunteer “Hubs”. These are groups of Property Guardians (and other volunteers like local photographers, Bird’s Eye View and outreach/events volunteers), who help to care for our conservation land network in their own communities.

How do “Hubs” work?

Organizing

Volunteer Hubs are located in communities across Nova Scotia where there are high densities of Nature Trust lands – places like the St. Mary’s River (where we’ve been building a “Ribbon of Green” for nearly 15 years), the 100 Wild Islands, the South Shore/Keji region and the Annapolis Valley. We plan to expand the Hub model to include Southwest Nova, Mabou and Bras d’Or in the coming years.

Technology

Volunteers in these communities have access to an online “Hub Folder” where they can access property maps, directions, GPS files and monitoring report forms. They can also keep track of their monitoring visits and stewardship activities using a simple spreadsheet in the folder – this way we ensure efforts are not duplicated and all properties get a visit during the year. And lastly, there is contact information for other members of the Hub group, so volunteers can self-organize when larger stewardship tasks need to be accomplished. Nature Trust staff are always happy to provide support and expertise and to facilitate additional trainings as needed.

Developing Leadership

Volunteers in the Annapolis Valley Hub remove the “Adult Treehouse”, December 2020.

The goal of the Hub model is to create groups of semi-autonomous volunteers who are empowered to take stewardship action on the conservation lands in their communities. This year we were thrilled to see the Annapolis Valley Hub address a long standing stewardship issue on the North Mountain Woodlands Conservation Lands. Staff were originally planning to attend the event, a hunting camp removal project (also known as the Adult Tree House), but due to increased Covid restrictions, we were unable to make the trip. The volunteers, however, forged on and had a successful day removing the structure from the property. They organized with other community members to ensure they had everything they needed to make it happen, demonstrating true ownership over this project (including arranging transportation and disposal and ensuring safety measures were followed). This is what we mean when we say “developing leadership in others” and we were thrilled to see their accomplishments.

Annual Meetings

Next year, and annually after that, we will host Hub meetings. Our plan this year was to visit each of the four hub locations to host a group meeting to explain the Hub model and how it works and to take a closer look at the conservation lands network in their community. Unfortunately, Covid-19 had other plans. We were still able to train some new volunteers in three of the four communities and get out with the groups to visit a conservation land in their area, but we were not able to host our group meetings as we’d hoped.

If we are still in a situation where social distancing is required next year, we will host virtual meetings and smaller outdoor events when possible.

Looking Ahead

We are excited to see the progress that the Hub model has made already and are looking forward to unlocking the potential of our volunteers across the province by providing them with the tools and knowledge they need to succeed. This year we received a generous grant from the McCain Foundation to further our work Connecting Communities to Nature.

Thanks to the incredible interest in the Property Guardians program over the last two years and our ability to build our capacity at the Nature Trust, we’re now able to save even more land! We’ve committed to doubling our protecting areas by 2023 – caring for over 30,000 acres of land across Nova Scotia through our Twice the Wild campaign. The Hub model is one of the tools we’re using to ensure we can continue to save our province’s most special wild places and to connect more Nova Scotians with Nature in their home communities. Get in touch if you’d like to join a Hub in your community, today!

Contact us at volunteer@nsnt.ca to learn more about our volunteer programs, the Hub model, Engagement Organizing, or our Connecting Communities to Nature initiative.

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