Annual Report 2016 | Page 9

Member Report Partnerships Our partners give us the incentive to keep doing what we do. Our most important partners are our five municipalities and Roseau River First Nation. Their annual memberships support our operations and provide us with leveraging dollars. Actif Epica keeps us going during the winter, with their annual event on the long weekend of February. In 2016, it became a qualifier for the Iditarod Trails Invitational in Alaska. We got to meet racers from all over North America and beyond who appreciated all the work we did on the Trail. The Morris Cadets are getting ready to identify and establish camping spots at regular intervals along the Trail, that they can also use for their survival training. Roseau River First Nation Our trail section on Roseau Rapids isn’t very long but it has great potential. Our Association was successful in receiving a Heritage Grant to hire a consultant for a development plan. Through consultations, simple steps were identified which include better signage (in three languages) and infrastructure development. This is a work in progress. Marketing We now have a Crow Wing Trail banner at each of the seven Actif Epica checkpoints and each year, we pay for an ad in the Eastman Tourism Guide. Our greatest challenge is with social media which trail users mostly depend on. Most of our Board Members aren’t very well versed in this type of technology, although we hope to get some official GPS training from our Cadet partners soon! We are confident that the new Trails Manitoba web map will inspire some interested youth to join us on this journey! 2017 already promises to be exciting! We held a strategic planning session in March, with many of our friends and supporters participating. Our goal to be sustainable is surely within our grasp! Annual Report 2016-Trails Manitoba p.9