The newly created Youth Take Charge program aims to increase youth attachment to Canada by encouraging engagement in the fields of history and heritage, civic and youth service, arts and culture and economic activities.

The program will provide grants and contributions to eligible organizations in support of projects involving youth aged 7 – 30.  

The first deadline for applications is June 14, 2010 for projects starting between December 1 – March 31, 2010.  For more details on eligibility criteria and to find out how to submit an application for funding, please refer to the Program Guidelines and Application Forms found on the Youth Take Charge website.

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Ask … and you shall receive!  Below is Part III of a three-part guest series exploring community development and its impacts.  Thanks to a reader’s suggestion, photos of both communities have been included.  Read on to discover the common-sense – yet often overlooked – lessons these communities offer.  Click on the following links to read Part I and Part II.  As always, comments and feedback are invited!

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A Tale of Two Communities, Part III

By Peter MacGibbon

So … what does the ‘tale of two communities’ tell us as researchers, practitioners and – finally – as residents of rurban areas, a designation that implies not only change, but a responsibility to manage wisely the opportunities afforded those rural communities that stand to benefit (or suffer) from proximity to a major Canadian city?

The lessons learned from comparing the vision and process for developing Community Centres in Chelsea and Wakefield are numerous.  Some are so obvious that it’s easy in hindsight to shake one’s head in disbelief.  Others are more subtle and would have required wiser leadership from the very beginning.  However, the major difference between the two projects has been the willingness (or lack thereof) to understand and recognize the stake of the community as a whole in the process, to listen carefully to all of the issues raised, and to respond to those concerns in meaningful and respectful ways. 

Know your community.

Understand its geography and demography, and know which locations are likely to attract resident’s activities and for what.  Recognize the fact that many will have a different vision for the community that will be less prominent than the one forwarded by developers who have a constant stake in turning a profit.  (This, rather than any doubtful collaborative advantage that the artsies up in Wakefield might inherently have over jocks, has been the crux of the dividing issue in Chelsea.)

Understand how seemingly peripheral issues such as previous tax increases and lack of essential services will undermine a vision that doesn’t acknowledge them.  Read the public mood and listen to what people are saying.  Never dismiss “squeaky wheels” in favour of some unproven silent majority.  (In general, Canadians are not moved to argue an issue unless they really believe in its importance.)

Engage everyone.

This means informing people every step of the way, ideally beginning through a demonstration of public buy-in, both real and symbolic, to the basic idea (such as Wakefield Co-op’s membership campaign).  Look at previous successes in community branding and build on them.  Chelsea established itself as an environmentally-innovative community in the 1990’s when it became the first North American municipality to ban outright the use of pesticide and herbicide sprays.  That progressive image has significantly faded now that the community is better known as a battleground for developments conceived and pushed through from behind Council doors.

Involve legitimate stakeholders from a cross-section of the community, not just politicians or a “leader” chosen by them.  Take the time to explore alternative visions until the community can arrive at one that it feels truly comfortable with, even if that vision seems less ambitious than the one that the leadership would like.

Avoid “house-of-cards” planning.

Tying the main project to a string of pre-requisite developments leaves it vulnerable if one or more of them should fail or be un-popularly received.  Chelsea’s Community Centre plan was predicated on the construction of a sewage system for its so-called “downtown” core, which in turn was supposedly to be paid for by the construction of a new high-density housing development, itself hotly contested by local residents in a referendum that ended with the tie-breaking vote being cast by - guess who? - the mayor.  Thus, the project focus shifted from the community it was meant to serve, to a business plan that had to be accommodated at all costs.

Play fair.

Communities (much like nations) don’t enjoy being told there is a whole new status quo based on the fickle results of a few votes swinging one way or the other.  Democracy does not mean “winner takes all,” and it looks especially bad if the winner then sets about trying to silence all further opposition to its divisive practices.  This behaviour is not only bad public form, but it will inevitably come back to haunt the winner when Murphy’s Law kicks in and things go wrong.

For instance, the soil quality of the much-ballyhooed private land donated to Chelsea for its Community Centre was not properly assessed before the project budget was set.  Now, the Centre will require a minimum of $1 million dollars’ worth of additional reinforcement to the building’s foundation, which may be the first of many hidden costs coming to light.  As of this writing, the Chelsea Foundation had not met the pre-conditions set by the provincial and federal funders of the project, with not one dollar forthcoming, nor one shovelful of construction earth overturned.  Planned changes to the Centre’s design have not been made public, and no more community consultations will be held.

The Wakefield-La Pêche Community Centre Cooperative, meanwhile, just signed its agreement to receive its promised federal/provincial funding, and plans to break ground on the construction project a month from now.  Unforeseen shortfalls for paying for landscaping and interior furnishings will be covered by donated time, skills, and materials from within the community.  For Wakefield, it’s been a long, hard road, but the extra work is paying off.

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Photo Credits:  River Echo, Peter Ellis

Related Posts:

• Exploring Rural Development: A Tale of Two Communities, Part II
• Exploring Rural Development: A Tale of Two Communities, Part I
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Below is Part II of a three-part guest series exploring community development and its impacts.  Part I can be viewed here.

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A Tale of Two Communities, Part II

By Peter MacGibbon

In my first posting, I described two neighbouring rurban communities undertaking simultaneous Community Centre development projects, with very different challenges posed to them by their contrasting geographies.  I’ll now compare the vision and process each community followed and how these have either supported or detracted from their final objective.

The socio-geographic factors mentioned previously have played a role in attracting different sorts of newcomers over the last several decades to both Chelsea and Wakefield.  Chelsea has tended to appeal more to outdoorsy jocks, while Wakefield has become something of an artists’ colony.  These are generalizations, of course, in that there are mixes of all kinds of people in both places, but locals would have no trouble identifying which community is which.

This demographic distinction has influenced the design of their respective Community Centres, with a definite bias towards sports in Chelsea (whose centrepiece will be an indoor hockey arena), and a recognition of the arts by the inclusion of a performance theatre for Wakefield.  The problem is, hockey arenas are expensive to build and maintain, and thus rely for revenues on outside visitors arriving for a single-stop purpose (to play hockey, then leave), while a theatre has the potential not only for local and outside revenue, but to support the village’s surrounding restaurants, cafes, and shops, all of which make a trip to a performance a full social outing.

Then there is the question of a cohesive community self-image.  Wakefield is a real “village” where people enjoy meeting to do things, which often include volunteer-driven projects such as their grass-roots Community Centre campaign itself, which obtained well over the number of its actual population in paid memberships a full four years before the Centre’s plan was recognized for external funding.

Chelsea, situated much closer to the city, yet lacking any natural gathering centre, is in limbo between its not-so-distant rural community past and the suburbanizing influence of local politicians and developers keen on taking advantage of one of the highest per-capita income municipalities in Canada.  Indeed, substantial tax hikes in Chelsea in the last few years, along with few discernible improvements to actual services, have added to the perception of the Municipal Council as fat-cats who are pushing through Chelsea’s Community Centre project from behind the scenes, concurrently with a host of other fiscally and environmentally controversial projects that leave many (up to half) of the municipality’s residents angry and resentful.

The Wakefield Centre committee first formed a volunteer cooperative, and invited the entire community to be members.  It has consulted, wrangled, cooperated, and compromised in full public view, and with minimal political support.

Chelsea formed a foundation (which few people knew about) and paid its inner circle to develop a plan.  Its one significant attempt to consult with the community via town-hall meetings and surveys was dismissed by the insiders as being “unrepresentative,” when results showed that many residents were unhappy with both the vision and the process.

Wakefield’s Centre will host the village library, youth centre, recreation centre and theatre company, all with overwhelming local support.  Chelsea’s Centre, with community support split evenly down the middle, will house the hockey arena, along with a multi-purpose “space” for ad-hoc events and services.

It’s thus been hard for the electorate of Chelsea not to perceive the Centre project as a giant daycare centre for the children of latter-day yuppies and soccer moms sick of returning back to the city yet again, kids-in-tow, after returning home from work.  (While less driving is good for any of us, the Chelsea Centre’s business case still rests on drawing more traffic out from the city to use the arena.)  These perceptions have only been aggravated by the recent election which saw a Chelsea Foundation member elected mayor by the slimmest of majorities amid heavy-handed threats to sue opponents and the local press for defamation.  Hardly the stuff of inspired community leadership.

In my third and final posting on this topic, I will look at some of the lessons learned from these dual processes, and invite comment as to why, given the obviously different circumstances from which both communities were operating, Chelsea could not pull itself away from an as-yet-unresolved disaster in community development politics. 

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Related Posts:

• Exploring Rural Development: A Tale of Two Communities, Part III
• Exploring Rural Development: A Tale of Two Communities, Part I
• Cooperatives a Rising Trend
• Saying No Isn’t Nonsense
• Growing Food Helps Connect Urban and Rural Neighbours