After almost two decades of service with the local Kin Club, Amanda Naughton-Gale is moving up the chain to serve as national VIce President for Kin Canada. The role is actually a three-year commitment: this year as vice president, next year as president, and finally a year as past president. While this year is more of a learning year, it’s next year as president that Naughton-Gale will get to see her vision for the organisation come to the forefront.

Naughton-Gale’s passion is for community development, and it was her work on the local level that brought her national attention. At that time, Naughton-Gale says, she wasn’t even particularly aware of what the club was doing nationally and was very focused on Neepawa and the surrounding area. First working at the district level in the early 2010s, she became head of the district that Neepawa is part of in 2015 for one year, and following that served on the national board as a member at large. That was her first taste of what the national organisation looked like.

When the pandemic hit, some clubs folded but others, such as Neepawa, flourished. They started several new initiatives, such as the Hugs for the Holidays program for isolated seniors among others. The motto of the Kin Club is “Serving the Community’s Greatest Need”, which gives a lot of flexibility for local clubs to serve their community in ways that suit them best without the pressure to all be providing the same services or resources. The organisation provides infrastructure, such as financial accountability practices, that can be brought to nearly any local project.

Moving into a leadership role at the national level, Naughton-Gale wants to bring that community development ethos with her.  Her vision is to make clubs more visible within their communities, sharing the stories of what the Kin club has done and helping people find the right fit for them to give back to their communities. It’s important, she says, for the national board to pull best practices from the individual clubs at the community level and share that information across the country. Communication in itself is also a priority, as she is keenly aware from being in a more rural club that not everyone has the same access to high-speed internet and messaging needs to go out in many forms.

As for her legacy, Naughton-Gale’s vision isn’t flashy. She wants to leave the position having laid a foundation for stronger, healthier communities across the country, to set them up for success, just like she continues to do at home.