The Power of An Invitation This post comes from Ksenia Stepkina, a very talented community builder who I met at a monthly community conversation that I host. Thanks Ksenia for sharing this story. Back home, we knew all of our neighbours in our apartment buildi...

Last week I found a community place I had not seen before. This skate park, Leeside Skate Park, is next to Hastings Park in an old railroad tunnel. The ramps, quarterpipes, obstacles and graffiti are all amazing.I learned that this skating wonderland was creat...

I was pretty excited to return to my library this week. For now only a few sections would be open, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. After going through these main doors, I saw a line waiting for access to computers but I walked right in to the main floor...

During a recent interview with a group of community builders, one person commented that they always committed at least 30 minutes of their bi-monthly team meetings to talking about the assets that were seeing in their community. These assets were people, group...

People will act, on what they care about. Last night I was reminded of this when I met with the cohort at City Shapers. City Shapers is a civic education program that brings together young community builders from across Metro Vancouver to learn about civic eng...

There are many lists going around on FB such list your top 10 albums that have influenced your musical tastes, best photos, best art, etc. Many of them say just post a photo and that no explanation is needed. And then often you are to tag someone or a bunch of...

This was the last large gathering I was part of before social distancing became the expectation. This was 3 days with old friends and meeting new ones; all sharing how people build connections in their neighbourhoods and the significance of this. As you can se...

I continue to be inspired by the many ways people are connecting to each other. There are simple ways from a phone call or text to using technology and having a video conversation. I also love the ways people are connecting around their interests from a DVD sw...

With life changing over the past week and the postponement of social gatherings, I have been spending part of each day on the search for new beauty and places in my community. On my first day I came across this woman who is also searching: searching for someth...

Last week I watched as a nearby greenspace was quickly transformed into a nice looking park. The park was created in 2 – 3 hours and was created for the filming of a tv show. It was all removed by the next morning. I thought then, what if they had left t...