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The development of the Northern Forest Diversification
Centre (NFDC) began about four years ago as a community
development initiative of Keewatin Community College in
Northern Manitoba. Funding from Western Economic
Diversification and the Province of Manitoba, paid for
the initial feasibility study, and the development of the 10-day
community based training program.
The mission of the NFDC is to work with
marginalized forest communities and individuals who are looking to
develop economic opportunities that are aligned with local values
and based on local resources, for the benefit of local people.
The Centre has identified Non-Timber Forest Products as a
realistic, practical, income generating opportunity that can be
developed by building on local skills and knowledge. Based on
a system of sustainable harvesting and use, the NFDC acts as a
research, training, marketing, sales and service centre for the
provincial Non-Timber Forest Product (NFTP) industry. The
NFDC vision is a NTFP industry composed of a network of
community based and diverse micro-enterprises supported by a
21st Century packaging and marketing infrastructure.
The NFDC offers a ten-day community based training course
focusing on local resources, plant identification and basic ecology,
sustainable harvesting and handling practices, aboriginal issues,
low-tech value added processing, and marketing. The training
includes a flexible combination of classroom, field, and value-added
processing exercises. An important feature of this training is
that there is no age or education restriction.
The NFDC now employs a full-time marketing manager and
last year marketed products from over 200 harvesters from 22
communities. The general categories of Non-Timber Forest
Products include, wild crafts and floral supplies, wild foods and
wild medicinal products. These products include; wild tea
blends, skin slaves, senega root, labrador tea leaf, blue hyssop,
sweet grass, sweet gale leaf, sweet flag root, bearberry leaf, black
poplar buds and high bush cranberry bark. In addition to
providing marketing services, the NFDC assists interested producers
to develop their own markets and work directly with the marketing
manager to develop these opportunities.
The NFDC model has generated interest from across
Canada, and the USA, and is currently working with the Centre for
Non-Timber Resources at Royal Roads University to develop a
Western Canadian NTFP Network from Manitoba to the
Yukon.
Expansion of this community development model across the
Canadian Boreal Forest would be a small but positive step in the
fight against poverty and the development of a sustainable economy
for many small forest communities in the North.
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