The Manitoba Wildlife Federation is taking proactive steps to grow their membership and recruit new hunters, anglers and Hunter Education instructors to their clubs across Manitoba through tutorials such as ‘Train the Trainer’ seminars. 

This week the MWF held their ‘Train the Trainer’ seminar virtually, in order to reach as many participants as they could from all corners of the province. 

MWF Managing Director, Carly Deacon, says their goal is to increase the accessibility to resources to affiliate MWF clubs, or individuals or volunteers, that want to start different outdoor programming in their community. 

“We’ve been starting to build resources and manuals around things like firearms training days on ranges, mentored hunts, and shoreline fishing clinics,” explains Deacon, “different things that we can do to help recruit anglers and hunters.” 

“What we want to see is different programs and clubs use these programs for various ways of community engagement,” she says.  

Deacon says their resources help provide an avenue for local club members to meet their community but it also gives the MWF an avenue to expand their programming outside of their capacity, “because we can put on only so many with our staff, but we can help them deliver a successful program with what we’ve learned, and with the resources that we’ve compiled,” she adds. 

During the ‘Train the Trainer’ seminar, participants get a review of outdoor hunting and angling programs that are available to their communities. 

“And then we can provide them with teaching resources,” explains Deacon. “We have partnerships with the government and Delta Water Fowl and other avenues, where we can refer them to different resources or help them out with some of the different costs and supplies.” 

“So, this is kind of a way for us to provide some information, and train communities how to run these programs.”