Mount Pleasant community members continue to participate with the City of Vancouver community planning initiatives. The most recent Social Coordinating Group meeting hosted a large turnout to address social issues within the community. With the large turnout, even splitting out into groups to address key areas of neighbourhood (and Vancouver) social issues, there were good numbers present and participating to offer a strong voice representative of a diverse community.
In attendance and participating brought a blend of history upon the neighbourhood's issues, growth, politics, and more. Equally, the items tabled added more fodder for the trough. The task? To have each participant place 3 x's alongside a proposed line-item - proposed, as in explored further - that was a practical, actionable priority that could be sustainable once the City is no longer directly involved.
As diverse a community as we are, we are still one community. The traditional strategy to address social issues appears to target special groups. Whether it is for youth, seniors, immigrants, panhandler, or low-income, our problems still resonate, have commonalities. Rather than continue to segregate, re-integrate. Allow the community to discover one another, be exposed and finding opportunities to work and volunteer alongside one another, and our issues can become the shared burden they have always meant to be in any civilized society.
People live, work, and play, and business provides goods, services, and earnings. Taxes are collected, programs are implemented, and the more demanding the public gets, the more strained the public-coffers, the more adept the politically savvy, and the more unwisely spent go our public dollars. A real cohesive community with a solid infrastructure of systems in place, a residents association with appropriate sub-committee's for special interest, and the more benefits a community can enjoy.
Prior experience, other municipal examples, all demonstrate the power of the everyday common citizen and business that contributes to community. LiveInMountPleasant.com places this platform, this website and community portal at the disposal of the Mount Pleasant Vancouver East community. We also like to acknowledge Rick Stonehouse, Real Estate Advisor, whose generous sponsorship has made this possible.
The Community Discussion Forum can be a profound vehicle of impact, enabling participants to Register a User Account and to begin engaging in conversations, connecting people to opportunity, and creating it where there is none. Contact the Community Relations Director for the LiveInMountPleasant.com project here.
Divide and conquer is actually what is happening and will continue if left as is: One Voice, One Community, One People. All multicultural arguments belong in the same solution outlined here. Wherever we see these good things exist, despite the odds, these are people building community. Embrace each other.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
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