The International Day for the Eradication of Poverty is set to take place on Oct. 17 and Action Plus Brome-Missisquoi is calling on community members to collectively come together to defend the rights of those on social assistance and living in a cycle of poverty.

The mission of Action Plus Brome-Missisquoi, according to its website, is to "help people on social assistance and people living below the poverty line.”

The Knowlton Literary Association is marking the 13th edition of its annual Knowlton Literary Festival and this year it is exploring new avenues.

While active readers are familiar with seeing some of their favourite published authors, poets, and up-and-coming writers from the local area and beyond, the Knowlton Literary Association has invited former CBC broadcaster Wendy Mesley, investigative journalist and author Jacquie McNish, and author and political editor of MacLean’s magazine Paul Wells to partake in its first journalism panel.

After hosting one of its major fundraising campaigns over Labor Day weekend, the Friends of Massey-Vanier Vikings (FMVV) have marked a successful first step in supporting the students athletes of Massey-Vanier High-school (MVHS).

FMVV has tallied its donations and it raised enough funds to cut the fall sports fees at MVHS in half. Students are required to contribute fees to join sports teams and help pay for expenses such as late buses which bring students home after practices and games.

After being put on the market by the Knowlton-Mountain Valley Pastoral Charge in June, Knowlton’s United Church has found a buyer in software developer Mohamad Kamaredine.

Kamaredine purchased a historic stone house down the street from the United Church back in 2017. At the time, he was looking to put down roots in a village that possessed an “old soul.” With a keen interest in the real-estate market, he recently came across the United Church.

Festi’Bois organizers are expanding on their educational mission by adding a number of conferences to the programming for the event's upcoming fourth edition.

Festi’Bois was started in 2019 by the Réseau foresterie Frelighsburg et région and it provides a platform for artisans that transform wood and professionals that work with the forests to show off their craft through workshops. However, as Festi'Bois continues to grow, organizers felt that more needed to be done this year to prioritize educating people on subjects related to the forests, nature, and the environment to provide a more “complete” experience for the community.

Conservation organizations and environmental experts are working on developing the concept of ‘eco-citizenship’ and putting the environment at the forefront of educational initiatives here in the Eastern Townships in the face of a global climate crisis. 

Isabelle Grégoire, head of educational programs, operations coordination, and environmental sciences and eco-citizenship for the Mount Pinnacle Land Trust, has been coordinating, creating, and teaching environmental science programs for primary schools, secondary schools, and collegial institutions for the past 25 years. More recently, she has also been working with other environmental groups, conservation organizations, MRCs, and municipalities. 

As a part of its annual Fall Festival this year, the Mont SUTTON ski resort has decided to host a recruitment day on Oct. 14 with hopes of welcoming new people to its team. 

Mont SUTTON usually organizes a recruitment day every year, said Lydia Lyonnais, communications coordinator for Mont SUTTON, but it changed things up by making it a part of the festivals’ programming in order for attendees to experience Mont SUTTON with its fall colours at their “peak.”

The Town of Brome Lake is launching the first edition of its new Les Friands festival this weekend with the goal of showcasing the culinary expertise, producers, and artisans of the area. 

The Les Friands festival is described as an extension of Tourism Lac-Brome's successful Grande Tablée events that were offered this summer. The Grande Tablée invited local producers Vitality Elderberry, Léon Courville Vigneron, and Cheeky Creek Farm to open up their grounds to locals and visitors alike to share a five-course meal created with the help of a chef. The goal was to experience what these producers offer in an enhanced setting that also saw musicians, artists, and story-tellers make an appearance.

Action Communautaire Lac-Brome (ACLB) - a non-profit organization that supports the quality of life in Brome Lake through the integration of health and social services - is seeking English-speaking caregivers of individuals living with a neurocognitive impairment to participate in the new “Coffee Break” program offered in partnership with the Societé Alzheimer Brome-Missisquoi-Haute Yamaska.

The goal with the Coffee Break program - free to Brome-Missisquoi residents - is to provide caregivers, whether that be a significant other, family members, or friend of a person with a neurocognitive impairment, with the opportunity to discuss and exchange their experiences with others in a safe and friendly space.

L’Organisme bassant versant de la baie Missisquoi (OBVBM) is warning Brome-Missisquoi citizens to remain cautious of the presence of cyanobacteria in the region’s lakes and rivers as we head further into September.

According to the organization, the unprecedented amounts of precipitation over the summer and the more recent periods of warm weather has resulted in the appearance of what is commonly known as blue-green algae blooms in some of the region’s water bodies. Due to the heavy rains, run-off water carrying sediments filled with phosphorus, which feeds the blooms, is also seen as a contributing factor to these outbreaks.

The Eastern Townships School Board (ETSB) is still looking for qualified educators and support staff as Quebec schools face challenges with teaching and staffing shortages.

Chairperson for the ETSB Michael Murray told CIDI that while the school board has been able to fill its vacant teaching positions, it is still looking for special education technicians and classroom aides for students with learning disabilities.

The Eastern Townships' nine vocational training centres have come together to launch a regional strategy known as the 'VT Effect' with the goal of raising awareness around vocational training and what it contributes to the lives of students and society at large. 

According to Johanna Bisson, Assistant Director of Continuing Education for the Eastern Townships Schools Board (ETSB), the launch of the VT Effect will see the region's vocational training centres collectively promote vocational training as a valuable form of education for the very first time. These vocational training centres are Campus Brome-Missisquoi (CBM), Lennoxville Vocational Training Centre (LVTC), Centre Régional Intégré De Formation (CRIF), Crifa, Centre 24-Juin, Centre Expé, Centre De Formation Professionnelle le Granit, Centre De Formation Professionnelle du Haut-Saint-François, Maison Familiale Rurale du Granit (MFR), and Service aux Entreprises Estrie (SAE-ESTRIE). 

Appalachian Corridor is the recipient of $2.19 million in funding from the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change to protect threatened species found in the Northern Green Mountains region of Southern Quebec, particularly in the Eastern Townships.

Over the next three years, Appalachian Corridor will be provided with funding from the Community-Nominated Priority Places Program to mobilize stakeholders, including other conservation organizations, municipalities, and private landowners, and support or implement projects that will help protect and conserve threatened species and their habitats in this specific area of the Northern Green Mountains.

The Brome-Missisquoi-Perkins Foundation (BMP Foundation) is launching the 8th edition of its Oktoberfest fundraiser with all proceeds raised going towards the purchase of two decentralized automated cabinets for the Brome-Missisquoi-Perkins Hospital (BMP Hospital).

The BMP Foundation typically organizes various fundraisers throughout the year, including Oktoberfest, for a number of different projects and initiatives in support of the BMP Hospital. This year however, the group has decided to concentrate all of its fundraising efforts on purchasing the two decentralized automated cabinets for the hospital’s Birthing Pavilion and Operating Room to help store and administer medication more securely.

The Mae Sot Education Project is looking to build a new generation of volunteers in order to continue providing support to refugee and migrant youth from Myanmar (Burma) living in Mae Sot, Thailand and to raise more awareness in Canada about the displacement of people as a result of repression and conflict. 

The project was put on hold throughout the pandemic, but the migrant schools centres in Mae Sot have officially re-opened. Recognizing that the need for international support still exists in Mae Sot and Myanmar, members of the Project Committee are hoping that others will get involved to carry the Mae Sot Education Project forward.

A committee of parents and the Town of Dunham are working together to bring a community daycare centre to the village to address the shortage in daycare spaces that the municipality has been facing over the last ten years.

To help bring this project to life, Dunham is benefiting from a provincial pilot project launched by the Quebec government last year. As Quebec experiences a province-wide shortage in daycare spaces, the pilot project provides a municipality with the opportunity to take one of its municipal spaces and convert it into a daycare centre for its community. Other Eastern Townships municipalities, like Brome Lake and Frelighsburg, have also benefitted from the pilot project.

The Brome County Agricultural Society (BCAS) is expanding its eco-responsible approach for the 2023 edition of Brome Fair to reduce the amount of waste that is produced and sent to the regional landfill.

The expansion of BCAS’s is a part of a longer-term vision to assess its carbon footprint and to come up with a plan to “mitigate that footprint overtime,” according to Peter McAuslan, chairperson of the BCAS’s Suitability Committee ("Green Team").

Now that Meta has followed through on its threat to block Canadian news content on its Instagram and Facebook platforms, people who work in the media and others who care about Canadian news have been asking the question "What next?".

Pascale Ste. Onge is the newly appointed Minister of Canadian Heritage. She is also the MP for the riding of Brome-Missisquoi in Quebec's Eastern Townships, which is also the home to CIDI, the Township's community radio station. The station had the opportunity to ask the Minister directly.  The station also spoke to Paul Deegan from News Media Canada and Alex Freedman of the Community Radio Fund of Canada.

A non-profit enterprise known as the Friends of Massey-Vanier Vikings (FMVV) are raising start-up funds over Brome Fair weekend with hopes of supporting the number of sports programs that are offered at Massey-Vanier High School (MVHS).

Due to the increase in transportation costs over the years, students at MVHS are currently required to pay fees to join a sports team to help cover the costs for travelling around the region to play against other Eastern Townships School Board (ETSB) schools and for the late buses that bring players home after sports practices.

Dunham House has expanded its facilities to help meet the demand for its services and to ensure a financially viable future in order to continue providing quality care to English-speaking Quebecers. The expansion project comes at a time when concerns continue to grow around the access to health and social services in English in the province.

The residential treatment centre for individuals suffering from mental health and concurrent disorders, like addiction, originally served a maximum of 28 clientele, but a newly constructed building will now allow Dunham House to serve a maximum capacity of 40 clientele, according to Clinical Supervisor Anthony Berger.