Mighty Communities – Built from the Grassroots Up
by Kellie Underhill

"Together, we are mighty!"

That was the message of the keynote address at the Downtown Miramichi Business Network’s Annual General Meeting on Monday, January 26^th at the Kinsmen Centre.

In a rousing positive presentation including slides and music, guest speaker and president of INM Group, Terry Matchett, thanked the business community for supporting Mighty Miramichi and sharing in its continued success.

INM Group recently rolled out their Mighty Community product to all of Atlantic Canada based on the success in Miramichi.

During the presentation entitled Building a Mighty Community — One Business at a Time, Matchett announced that Conrad Toner officially signed on and began building Mighty Grand Falls. Businesses in Kent County also expressed an interest in forming their own Mighty Community.

He stressed the importance of working together and forming partnerships, business to business within the community, but also on a larger scale community to community within the region. He continued by showing slides of the Mighty Grand Falls and Mighty Kent websites, consisting of maps with Miramichi clearly visible on both.

In the same way Miramichiers discover their own backyard by using the Mighty Miramichi website, when people in Grand Falls and Kent County use their Mighty website they’ll also have the option to visit the Mighty Miramichi. Matchett assured that the development of more Mighty Communities would help springboard Miramichi into mutually beneficial new partnerships with other communities.

Using the Internet for e-commerce opens the international marketplace to rural businesses and levels the playing field. To someone living on the other side of the world all places in Canada are equal as far as distance or potential for doing business. Matchett mentioned a couple of local businesses successful in selling their products over the Internet to customers all over the world.

He stressed that it’s only through working together that any of this has been possible and INM Group will continue to work together with Miramichi businesses to firmly entrench the Miramichi’s place on the global stage.

Kellie Underhill is the editor of Bread 'n Molasses. Her writing credits include The Moncton Times-Transcript, The Brunswick Business Journal, The Atlantic Chamber Journal and The Reader magazine. Send comments about this article to editor@breadnmolasses.com.