COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

Communities go about strengthening their capacity in a wide variety of ways, depending on their size, their geography, local demographics, community strengths and deficits. Some of the community building strategies that we have supported include:

• The development of community based planning networks (e.g. Best Start Networks, Poverty Roundtables)
• Helping communities to develop poverty reduction strategies
• Supporting seniors/age friendly planning
• Supporting the creation of local workforce development strategies

Formal strategies for community development serve to coordinate, integrate and focus local actions and help with evaluating local efforts. The ways in which community development manifests itself are as varied as the communities that approach us for help. Samples of recent projects we have supported are reflected below:

Age Friendly/Seniors – Strategic Planning

As the population of seniors grows, many communities are recognizing the need to accelerate plans to build a comprehensive system of community supports and services that are responsive to a wide spectrum of senior’s needs.

To this end, we are supporting communities to develop strategic plans to position themselves to respond to the demographic shift that is underway. Some of this work is based on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) model and framework for Age Friendly community planning. 

Immigration and Settlement – Strategic Planning

Working with the Windsor Essex Local Immigration Partnership (LIP) Council, we developed an Action Plan to support the implementation of their Local Settlement Strategy.

The resulting plan entitled Moving Forward [A Supplement to A Community Plan to Promote the Settlement and Integration of Immigrants in Windsor and Essex County] contains:

• A detailed Action Plan outlining key tasks/activities to be undertaken by the Council, including timeframes and responsibility centres,
• An approach to sustain collaborative community planning and support implementation of the Action Plan,
• A plan to enhance service and minimize duplication, and
• A strategy to develop performance measures, collect and report data and evaluate project success. 

Workforce Development - Strategic Planning

We continue to conduct strategic planning exercises with Workforce Development Boards. To date, we have supported strategic planning in both the Windsor Essex and Chatham-Kent communities – communities with the highest unemployment rates in the province of Ontario. Planning sessions have produced the following outcomes:

• Vision, mission and values statements to guide planning
• Examination of factors impacting local labour force development (SWOT analysis)
• Identification of strategic directions

Poverty Reduction – Strategic Planning

To effectively reduce poverty, strong leadership is necessary to develop coordinated strategies so that the various programs that are intended to reduce poverty complement each other.

Our firm his helping strengthen local Prosperity Roundtables across Ontario by helping communities to develop strategic plans to reduce poverty and supporting the implementation of their strategic priorities. Local action plans include enhancing community engagement, leveraging local resources, promoting change at the local, policy and systems levels, and ensuring accountability by measuring local outcomes.