“We need young people who go away to think of it as training for their return."
There’s truth to the statement. We absolutely do need young people to go away and return with new skills, networks and abilities. It is happening, and Atlantic Canada will need to continue and accelerate this influx of people with experiences and perspectives gained and honed elsewhere. It’s not because you can’t develop professionally here. But because the more global and integrated our world is, the more these attributes become advantages to organizations of all kinds who can leverage them.
Nevertheless, I think the causality is backwards. Young people don’t leave today in order to come back. They claim they want to return but the longer one is away the deeper go the roots. In order to make the above statement true we need to ensure that first they leave with meaningful connections and ties to the region and people. The tipping point will come when the “from aways” start migrating here, the folks who left will follow.
1 comments:
I think some leave because they think the grass is greener and some leave because they are curious. The curious once are the ones we want to return and we can help them return by showing them there is great potential and opportunity here.
The biggest obstacle to bringing people home is the slow pace of change here. We need to stop planning for change and actually make change happen - faster! That will create an environment that the curious and ambitious will want to plug into.
The ones who leave because they think the grass is greener can stay in the other pasture. They are not often builders and we need builders.
We all know this is a place of great potential. We need our ex-pats and internationally educated newcomers to be enabled to satisfy their curiosities and help make change happen. If we don't, they will find some other place that will. Currently, our conservative culture is a major impediment.
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