DECEMBER 7, 2010 BY The Banff Crag and Canyon
Senior planner for the Town of Banff Darren Enns decided to spend his recent two-week vacation volunteering in Guyana, and although he came home with a bit of a tan for November, it was all about what he helped to create, and what he left behind.
Enns volunteered through the Canada Guyana Partnership for Community Planning — a program under the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) through the Canadian Institute of Planners — and was the first volunteer of eight to facilitate workshops to local town staff on capacity building in three different cities over two weeks. Enns worked in: Vreed en Hoop, Georgetown, and New Amsterdam. During these certificate-based training programs for Guyanese planners, Enns’ focus was on teaching how to produce effective presentations in planning and polishing presentation skills in general. Enns said he hopes that the two weeks he spent in the developing nation, on the northern coast of South America, will become a cornerstone for the local staff to build upon.
“I’m hopeful that the attendees will return to their local governments with the confidence to organize and deliver effective presentations,” Enns said. “And in doing so, be in a better position to help their communities achieve their goals.”
It’s all very simple in nature, Enns explains, “Better communicators, make better planners.”
Enns said the other volunteer trainers following his visit will be addressing specific areas of community planning as well, such as facilitation methods, computer mapping, and conflict resolution.
“This program is a great opportunity for Canadian Planners to pass on some of the fundamentals of our profession to a developing nation as it moves forward in its economic and social development,” Enns said.
It was also a rewarding experience for Enns, as he was able to teach others about capacity building, an aspect of planning that he is quite passionate about.
“As the workshop facilitator, it’s always rewarding to see participants leaving with a new-found set of skills, and the confidence to implement them,” he said. “These opportunities are exceedingly rare in the developing world and this speaks to the importance of the CIDA’s efforts overseas.”
When Enns returned back to Banff, his trip to Guyana really put Banff’s planning issues into a new perspective.
“I found it interesting to go to a developing nation, because it puts problems in Banff into context,” Enns said. “Here it’s all a matter of details, and in Guyana it’s literacy and HIV rates.”
For Enns, Banff is just a part of the bigger picture.