Dear Readers
Come To My Yard community consultation in session – A new collaborative garden project in the heart of Kerrisdale that will be coming soon!
Dear Readers,
As our Kerrisdale Community Centre Society’s AGM is fast approaching (Wednesday February 15th, 7:30pm), I reflect on the vales of community. What is community? – That is a complex question. What motivates us to seek ‘community’ as a means of achieving what we want for ourselves and our family? And what shapes our choices about which communities we belong to? Locality? Familiarity? Convenience? Ancestry? or anything else? — What makes a life ‘liveable’?
As part of my non-profit work at Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society, I’ve been involved working with various “communities” to organize numerous community gatherings and create processes that are engaging, inspiring and inclusive. More and more, however, the creation of “community” has become an end in itself, as we come to learn from our experiences that the community is a vital aspect of a person’s ever-evolving sense of self and a source of creativity. We continue to engage in community-participately practices and public discussions of how our identity is formed and its relation to perceived community on a deep level.
There are a few noteworthy new initiatives in Kerrisdale that create the conditions for effective community development by helping the smaller groups to form and to connect their goals with the broader, overarching alliance. One is KCCS’s Community Engagement new initiative, English-Mandarian Language Exchange Meetup. The other is Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society’s Come To My Yard, a permaculture garden project in the heart of Kerrisdale funded by the City of Vancouver. Be curious, come together, help others, and be a part of a strong community!
Keiko Honda
Editor-in-Chief
Chair, Community Engagement Committee
