The Start of A Dream

In December 1994 the Presidents of the west-side core neighbourhoods were invited by members of the Employment and Income Committee of the Poverty Reduction Action Group to attend an information session on Community Economic Development. 

The information session was held at St. Thomas Wesley United Church with the late Harold Baker (Professor at the University of Saskatchewan) and Paul Wilkinson (Ministry of Social Services). Mr. Baker presented information on Community Economic Development, while Mr. Wilkinson talked about his visit to an organization, New Dawn Enterprises, which was doing work such as what Mr. Baker had talked about, on Cape Breton Island.

The presidents acknowledged that we, as individual associations and sometimes in partnership with each other, were dealing with and working on many of the things that had been presented, but we were not well coordinated. Everyone was excited to recognize that this could be our next logical step in helping our communities grow and become stronger.

We wanted others in our communities to hear about this and to receive more feedback. We left buoyed by plans to meet in the New Year to move forward. We gathered again in January 1995 and began to organize a west-side core neighbourhood ‘Community Forum’.