Getting involved with our local community association (CA) is the most meaningful thing I think I’ve personally done in the last handful of years aside from having children. Even as an introvert, getting to know my neighbours and step out of my social bubble a little to meet the people who live around me has been incredibly rewarding, and we’re really just getting started.
Here is a decent list to get you started on engaging with your community, but of course there’s also lots you can do that doesn’t involve the association at all, and of course this all might just not be your thing, and that’s OK too (although I didn’t think it was mine either and it definitely is). This list isn’t in a particular order, but I did think about their order while sorting and grouping them.
Join the Community Association
- Members can help plan and run events, they have a massive stake in the direction the CA takes on initiatives, community engagement, and advocacy.
- New rules in Ontario mean that to be a legally recognized voting member of the association, you need to register with us. It isn’t that hard, but it does require you providing us with some information.
When you Register, you can:
Subscribe to the Newsletter
- Every month we release a newsletter with some community-focused columns from our Board members, and community updates we get from different places around the neighbourhood.
Volunteer with planning or running an event
- If there is an event you’d like to run or just participate in, let us know and we can try to facilitate and/or spread the word to anyone in the area.
- Reach out via email ([email protected]) or the Community Forum to volunteer.
Attend a board meeting (as an observer)
- Our monthly board meetings (usually every 2nd Monday in the month) are not private, ask for an invite via email and we will add you to the virtual event.
- We encourage you to check out our roadmap of upcoming projects, activities, events, and advocacy projects. It’s an easy way to see what is coming up in the community to get involved and engaged in.
Staying in Touch
- We are running a survey to gauge interest in existing and new community events from the association, and also to get a sense of how residents feel about the community and its present and future.
- It has been very interesting to read these responses so far, please keep them coming!
- Chat with and get to know your neighbours on a variety of topics, including planning and running community events and activities with people in the neighbourhood.
- We love getting email from residents, usually they are very positive messages and if appropriate we act on them or get answers to your questions.
- Send something along to [email protected].
- The Facebook group is by far our biggest platform (with lots of members way outside our boundaries). However, between the Facebook algorithm and the singular feed of the group with no filtering or sorting or categorization, we don’t find it a particularly useful platform for productive community discussion. This is the reason we’re experimenting with the Community Forum, which has no social media algorithm and allows all kinds of categorization of messages.
Events and Activities
- The Association hosts a number of bigger events over the course of the year, but we’re hoping to organize and facilitate lots of smaller ones as well. You can also attend an event hosted by the CA without doing any work at all.
- In November, we launched a photo contest where residents vote on their favorite photo(s) from inside our neighbourhood borders.
- Every season a new theme is chosen to help spark some creativity when you’re out in the neighbourhood.
Follow News from the CA
- In September 2024 as part of our Annual General Meeting (AGM), we released a strategic plan for 2024-29.
- This includes an updated mission statement and vision for engaging with and working on behalf of the community to make the places we live better.
- If you use RSS syndication (you know who you are) we post timely articles advertising events, you’re encouraged to subscribe to our feed to keep up with the latest news.
- The Association has a Mastodon account that we will gladly update more often if we see activity in the community on that platform, right now we mostly use it for sharing newsletter columns and updates from our events.
