[Garden] FW: Thank You for Making the Empowered Neighbourhoods Forum a Success

Mon Nov 3 16:21:28 EST 2008

Hello Community Gardeners:

I was fortunate enough to see a very inspiring presentation from Jim Diers
from Seattle.  He has done some amazing work around community engagement and
has worked with the City of Seattle to create a Department of Neighbourhoods
and a Matching Grant Program to pay for the costs of Neighbourhood
development projects proposed and implemented by citizens of the
neighbourhoods in which the project will be located (please see
http://home.comcast.net/~jimdiers/bio.html ).  This event was sponsored by a
local group called nGage!    

"nGage! is devoted to building healthy, thriving, and safe neighbourhoods
through community engagement.  It's philosophy is based on three themes:

- your neighbourhood is the fundamental building block of community life;

- neighbours that talk and work with each other build the strongest
neighbourhoods; and,

- people who live in a neighbourhood are the ones who best know their local
needs."

To do this "nGage! is working to better connect neighbourhoods with
municipal governments, funding agencies, not-for-profit agencies, and local
businesses.  One of their ideas they are currently pursuing is the
development of a similar matching grant program to that of Seattle, where
the local governments and other funding agencies would match
dollar-for-dollar, money and in-kind contributions raised by a community".  

I am sending this out to the network since they are having a follow-up
meeting tomorrow night to start working on bringing some of the ideas from
Seattle to the Region of Waterloo.  One of the working groups they are going
to set up is on Community Gardens and it would be great to have
representation from those in the community that have experience with
community gardens to represent our interests, as well as pass along
information from this meeting to the rest of the network.  The Community
Garden Council is meeting this night and therefore will be unable to attend
so if others could attend and pass this information along it would be
appreciated.

I don't doubt this will be a great night, full of enthusiasm and fun!  Let's
try to keep community gardens an issue to work to explore with them.  With
the proposed Matching Grant opportunity, as well as interest in community
gardens, this could be just the perfect opportunity to get more money and
land set aside for community gardens!

Thanks in advance to all those that can make it!  I look forward to hearing
from you about the event.

Please see event details below..

Candace

________________________

Candace Wormsbecker

Community Garden Capacity Builder

Opportunities Waterloo Region

235  King St. E., Main Floor

Kitchener, ON

N2G 4N5

Tel: 519-883-2353 ext. 5984

Fax: 519-568-8587

"If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to it."
       - Jonathan Winters

  _____  

From: info at engageus.ca [mailto:info at engageus.ca] 
Sent: November-03-08 12:01 PM
To: CommunityForumRegistrants at nomail.org
Subject: Thank You for Making the Empowered Neighbourhoods Forum a Success

Thank you for having registered or participated at the recent community
forum Empowered Neighbourhoods: >From Theory to Practice. As you saw, there
was a huge amount of interest in this forum. Beyond sheer numbers, the
excitement from working together to improve our neighbourhoods was electric
- due in no small part to Jim Dier's infectious enthusiasm. Your own ideas
generated during the round-table discussions or for the Google competition
added to the sense that we are an innovative community brimming with
initiatives to help one another.

How do we channel this enthusiasm and energy to move from theory to
practice? As we announced at the forum, the next step is to be a part of the
follow-up meeting tomorrow evening. We have a few discussion topics that
arose from the forum. Based upon your interest in these discussion topics,
we will create action teams. nGage!'s job will be to facilitate the work of
these teams, whether it is to help with communications through our web site,
to help you connect with municipal staff or decision makers, or to show you
where to find the resources you need.

Our three initial topics are:

1.	Creation of Matching Funds for Community Investment

2.	Resident-driven Neighbourhood Planning

3.	Community Gardens

If you plan to be a part of our follow-up action meeting, please reply via
email indicating which topic interests you. If you would to suggest an
alternate idea for an action team, please let us know your topic.

As already announced, the meeting is on Tuesday, November 4 from 6 to 8 PM
at

The Queen Street Commons
43 Queen St South (between King and Charles)
Kitchener

Free parking is available at the City of Kitchener lot at Queen and Charles.
Refreshments will be provided.

For the meeting, we will be adopting the Open Space concept for managing
parallel sessions with many participants. You may find the Open Space
Overview document helpful.

We look forward to seeing you again tomorrow evening.

Thanks once again for your commitment to our community,

nGage! Planning Committee

Note: nGage! uses email broadcasts a few times a year to keep interested
parties informed about its work and outcomes. If you wish not to receive
further notices from nGage!, please reply via email and place the word
"unsubscribe" in the subject header. 

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