The first of a series of community conversations in Moose Jaw and across Southern Saskatchewan will be held next week.
The City of Moose Jaw will host one of the South Saskatchewan Community Foundation’s 50 Vital Community Conversations on Thursday, Mar. 21. The conversation is designed to engage citizens of Moose Jaw in what matters most to their community regarding Parks and Recreation.
“There already have been some conversations within City Hall, with the Parks and Recreation Department, about wanting to plan for the future. (We want) to find out from our residents just what it is that they envision in the next year or five years or the next 10, 15… what they would like to see for Parks and Recreation opportunities within the city,” said Craig Hemingway, communications manager for the City of Moose Jaw. “Having this opportunity presented through the South Sask. Community Foundation to have this conversation is really timely.”
The City of Moose Jaw’s Vital Community Conversation will begin at 6:30 p.m. at the meeting room at the Kinsmen Sportsplex.
Derek Blais started as the City’s new director of Parks and Recreation on Jan. 21. With Blais settling into his new role, Hemingway said that having a strategic plan for the Parks and Recreation Department has been identified as a priority.
“This event should give us a great starting point,” he said.
The City’s community conversation is one of a few that will take place in the area in the coming weeks. The South Central Regional Immigration Partnership (SCRIP) and the YMCA of Moose Jaw will also host their own community conversations in Moose Jaw though dates and times for those meetings have yet to be set. There will also be community conversations held in Assiniboia, Gravelbourg and Mossbank before the end of April.
The South Saskatchewan Community Foundation provided microgrants of $300 to 19 communities to host the 50 Vital Community Conversations in honour of the organization’s 50th anniversary.
“It is important to have these conversations so that SSCF can learn directly from the communities that we serve,” said Donna Ziegler, executive director of the South Saskatchewan Community Foundation. “We plan to review the information and hopefully use it to first understand the community and secondly to help us take a positive collaborative approach to solutions in the future. Each community will provide a final report outlining their conversation from the general questions that were asked. All of the input from the Vital Community Conversations will then be professionally reviewed by a research team and consolidated into a report of findings to be released in October 2019. What we learn will guide our actions to meet the needs that matter most and will focus our resources for the greatest impact.”
After the conversations, the SSCF is hoping to hear from a diverse set of communities and groups to help guide their work in Southern Saskatchewan.
“We hope that the legacy of this program will be to start off the next 50 years of the South Saskatchewan Community Foundation serving our entire community in the most responsive, meaningful, and engaged way based on everything that we have learnt,” Ziegler said.
The SSCF’s goal was to have 50 community conversations take place, but when they received 60 applications, they decided to give microgrants to each applicant.
“SSCF was glad to see such an interest in this program, and the more conversations that take place the more nuanced the report that we produce will be,” Ziegler said.
