Over the last two months, we have had two amazing Leadership Days with the Leadership Vancouver Island participants. In December, we were hosted by Ucluelet First Nation at their beautifully designed Kwisitis Feast House. The wide assortment of food and the panoramic view of Wickaninnish Beach set the stage for our topic of diversity, which opened our eyes in ways that we will never forget.
This was a powerful day that impacted all of us in some way. During the morning, we were honoured to be joined by Chuck McCarthy, Iris Frank and Tyson Touchie who shared stories from their heart about leadership and their perspective about cultural diversity.
They created a safe place for us to learn about how we can continue to build bridges that span each of our seven West Coast communities.
In the afternoon, Jennifer Adamson and Mitch Touchie took us on a journey into other important aspects of diversity and helped to increase our understanding of our unique strengths.
Thank you to Ucluelet First Nation for hosting us in the perfect venue of Kwisitis. It is a jewel that truly earns its name as a Feast House.
The New Year took us to the Tofino Botanical Gardens in January where Darwin's Café provided us with a cozy venue and a beautiful backdrop to learn about using leadership to inspire and engage our teams at work.
Through the stories of our community speaker Mayor Josie Osborne and the perspectives of our facilitator Patrick Ross, we learned that there are many daily changes we can make that will have a huge impact in someone's day.
Thank you for helping us to refine our 'A-Game'. As with any great meeting of friends their must be food and this day was specially catered by Chef Stephanie Hughes and her amazing curry! Our desserts were a mountain of Josie Jellies donated by Duane Bell and the Rhino Team.
The Jellies really helped us to understand how sweet and savoury it is to be the mayor. Our teams are moving toward the launch phase of their community projects, the creation of three different solutions to build volunteerism throughout the West Coast. Their front line view of this need and the passion that they bring will become evident as you learn more about their projects through press releases.
So stay tuned everyone because there's much more to come in the months ahead.
Our LVI cohort would also really like to thank our Board members and the communities for making this happen.
Without their vision of building leadership capacity on the West coast, this life-changing program would never have been a reality.
Our LVI West Coast chair role has shifted from Gord Johns of the Tofino/Longbeach Chamber of Commerce to Susan Payne of the Ucluelet Chamber of Commerce.
Thank you to Gord for his commitment to building leaders and to the Tofino Chamber for supporting this initiative every step of the way.
Thank you to Susan who has stepped up to take on the role for 2014 and for the support of the Ucluelet Chamber of Commerce for their continued support of our leaders.
We have already been receiving applications for this September's class, so we'd love to hear from you if you or one of your employees would like to join us on our next leadership journey beginning this fall.
ricardo@pacificrimleadership. com