Members of the Mennonite Heritage Village attended their annual general meeting on Tuesday to hear reports of the past year, elect new board members, and enjoy each others company.

Executive Director Barry Dyck says festival attendance was a highlight this year.

“One of the highlights this year was our festival attendance. We had to cancel our Spring on the Farm festival because of very inclement weather, but we recovered. The other festivals were so popular that our festival attendance was actually higher than what it normally is.”

Dyck says this last year has been steady financially which has allowed them to do a lot of work in the village in terms of restoring buildings and adding facilities.

“Over the last number of years we have basically held our own. We have had a couple of campaigns, in fact we are in the middle of a campaign right now which is generating a fair bit of income, but it is all earmarked for something very particular. Overall our financial statement is improving.”

Dyck says they sometimes find when they are raising money for a particular project people are very generous, but then the money that they normally give to operating costs is given to the special project.

Dyck says members elected some new faces to the board of directors.

“We had six openings on our board of directors, three of them have been filled by encumbents returning to positions, Scott Barkman, Scott Reimer, and Doris Penner. We also had three openings that have been filled by new people on the board, and we are always delighted when we can bring in new people. Those people are Marlene Reimer, Waldy Enns, and Glen Klassen.”

Dyck says they are heading into the new year with a very strong development initiative, noting they plan to do some repairs to the Waldheim house, build a three seasons building to replace the tent, replace furnaces, and pay off debt. He says the foundations for a strong future campaign is very exciting.