We continue to witness profound shifts to our places and to the systems that shape them.
Across the world, in our regions and our neighbourhoods, we are embracing these changes with strength and optimism. We see opportunities to bridge disparity gaps, enhance civic engagement, and reinforce the principles of equity, empathy, community, and belonging. These shifts are inspiring changemakers and community leaders to innovate, rejuvenate, and reimagine our approaches and resources.
Below are a few themes we’re observing as we interact with you, and some examples of local action that we’re celebrating.
What We’re Observing
As we connect with members of this network, we’re noticing:
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Your resolve to connect across locations, to learn and to make the work easier.
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Your commitment to bringing local, regional, and national approaches together to enable systemic change (and in ways that are responsive to each other's realities, assets, and contributions).
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Your commitment to caring for yourselves and others, including by connecting to spiritual practices and to the land, and by finding more spaces where you can be in community with others.
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Your work to hold multiple truths, including uncertainty and hesitancy on the one hand and resilience and bold vision for the future on the other.
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Your commitment to centring those with lived/living experience of systemic issues.
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Your desire to help groups build clarity on the type of change they seek. Does the context call for incremental or transformational change? For the creation of new paradigms or the composting of outdated structures? For a return to ancestral and traditional practices? These are the questions you are asking.
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Your recognition that community is an antidote to loneliness, overwhelm, and lack of agency.
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Your ability to balance short-term planning, shifting priorities and changing timelines that helps your work remain relevant while staying committed to strategies and processes that offer a long-term vision to work towards.
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Your commitment to joining spaces where you can deepen work around equity, belonging, reconciliation and systemic change.
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Your framing of your work in ways that offer alternative options in times of orchestrated noise and distraction.
Promising Community Successes
We see you dreaming new futures through a focus on imaginative practices, abundance, connection, and collective action.
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In the Yukon, youth leaders and partners have launched the Territorial Youth Strategy, designed around a future where all Yukon youth have a sense of belonging. This means they have a positive sense of self and their futures, have mutually caring and fulfilling relationships, and feel connected to and supported by their family, community, and land.
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In Carman, Manitoba, community members designed new ways to think about, engage, and recognize volunteers, underscoring the power of inclusion.
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On Salt Spring Island in BC, residents, community organizations, and the municipality are demonstrating how working at the hyper-local scale can accelerate and strengthen regional plans. Salt Spring Island's 50 Farms Project is transforming local food security and climate resilience through community collaboration and innovative grassroots efforts.
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In Atlantic Canada, community groups developed a consensus statement on Basic Income, signalling the promise of transformative policies rooted in equity and opportunity.
Join Us to Strengthen Community and make Lasting Change
Now more than ever, community is essential. Your focus on place, hope, and action are inspiring others. We can’t wait to dream, learn, and act together soon.
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Many of you have been gathering in communities of practice, exploring the role of community in topics such as emergency preparedness, livable basic income guarantees, community safety, and neighbourhood-building. You can get involved with those here.
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Upcoming webinars focus on the intersections between climate, belonging, public health, poverty, and how municipalities are taking up bold roles.
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Shape a National Strategy for Belonging via a working group that will delve into the critical issues surrounding belonging, exploring its multifaceted nature and its profound impact on individuals, communities, and regions. Help to create recommendations for what’s next for a strategy that brings municipalities, institutions, and residents together in and across places.
