The Community Futures national convention was held last week in Winnipeg. The national convention takes place every three years and brings together all of the Community Futures organizations in Canada for training and networking opportunities.

Colby Orchard is a business analyst with the Whitehorse Plains Community Futures which serves the Portage area. He explains how the skills gained through the convention can benefit our community.

"By getting together with all these different Community Futures, we learn different ways that Community Futures around the country operate. By doing that, we're able to help our local businesses and entrepreneurs with different tools that we see around the country," says Orchard, noting they learn many different approaches to resolving similar issues.

He shares some of the highlights of the convention included the keynotes speakers, the opportunity to get together with like-minded individuals and the chance to show off some great places in our province.

"We had some tours. One was out to Oak Hammock Marsh, we were out at Narcisse Snake Dens, we were in Gimli. We made it out to a Hutterite colony, out to a dairy farm, out to a Mennonite village," says Orchard. He adds it was an opportunity to show people from other parts of the country what life in rural Manitoba is like.

 The next national convention will take place in Ottawa in 2021.