Engage!

I am very excited to have been elected president of the GCA at Tuesday's AGM.  In my opinion, the GCA is one of the pillars that makes our community a great place to live (the others include GNAG, the Glebe Report, the Glebe BIA and its predecessor Glebe Business Group, the preschools/daycares/creative arts programming, the fantastic schools we are so lucky to have and many others).  I’ve had a number of roles with the GCA in the past and I’m looking forward to working with all the volunteers who devote time and energy to issues that are important to us as residents of the Glebe.

The GCA plays an important role as the voice of the community.  There are many decisions made by the City and other organizations (such as school boards) that affect our neighbourhood (a good example being the OCDSB idea to pave part of Mutchmor field for parking).  The GCA acts as a conduit to get information about these issues out to residents and then to feed information about impacts back to those organizations.  In many cases, the GCA advocates on behalf of the community when we think the negative impacts are unacceptable.

So, to me, I think the most important thing the GCA can do is to engage those of you who live and work in the Glebe.  That leads me to three questions that I will work on with the GCA Board:

1. How do we hear about issues in your part of the Glebe that the GCA should know about?
2. How do we get information from the City and other sources out to you, so that if there is something you are interested in, you will know about it?
3. How do we provide opportunities for you to be involved in the issues you care about?

Not everyone has the time to be on the Board or work on a committee (great if you do… call me!).  But on an issue you care about, you might have time to contribute in some way – doing research, making phone calls, putting up a poster, drafting a petition, commenting on a blog (hint!) or any number of other activities that contribute to effective advocacy.  

I’m hoping this blog will help with those three areas.  I’m not planning on blogging on a set time frame, but thought I would do so when I go to meetings or hear about issues I think some of you might be interested in.  The Board has talked in the past about the comment features on blogs as being one way to hear about what residents think, so I’m really hoping that you’ll use that feature.  And I don’t expect many issues to have unanimous opinions (such as the “kids not cars” and “parks not parking” sentiments about Mutchmor field). In fact I think we should look for all sides of an issue to be put forward.   If you have topic ideas, leave a comment.

My parting message for this blog is that the GCA wants to be fully engaged with its members.  We'll do our best to reach out in new ways, but to be effective, we need you to Engage! too.