Gwa’sala-’Nakwaxda’xw Comprehensive Community Planning Feb. 16 2009

Briefing on CCP:

o What is a CCP? It is a Comprehensive Community Plan, which means

that it is a plan for our community to grow in the areas of education, health, governance, infrastructure, culture, lands & resources, social issues, and economy. A CCP is a plan that is created by the community itself, and it should be a plan that can be used for many years to come.

o How do you do a CCP?

Different communities have different approaches. Our approach is to look at each of the eight areas equally (instead of focussing on just one or two). What we (staff) are doing right now is asking community members what our community needs in each of the eight areas, through meetings and questionnaires. Any information the community gives is recorded, so that at the end of this part of the CCP work we can review what everyone has been saying about each of the areas. This should give us a really good idea of what the community needs.

Once we have looked at all of that information, we will present it back to the community. Together we will then work on creating plans to address each of the needs. These plans can be simple or complicated, as long as they are realistic. Example: The community identifies a need to provide Bakwamk’ala education to adult community members. The community then comes up with a plan to run Bakwamk’ala classes in the community. These plans will say:

What will be taught in the classes

What kind of teaching materials will be used

What kinds of teaching materials need to be developed

Gwa’sala-’Nakwaxda’xw Comprehensive Community Planning Feb. 16 2009

When/how often the classes will run

Who will be allowed to attend the classes

Who will teach

Where the classes will be held

Where the funding will come from

Etc.

There might be other plans that deal with the same need. Over the summer of 2009, the community will create tons of plans to deal with all sorts of needs. These plans will all be put together into a final CCP which we can start to act upon right away.

o What will happen with the CCP? From now until the end of June there will be a CCP

meeting almost every Monday to talk about different community issues. Each meeting has a topic, like ‘Health’. A free dinner is offered at each meeting, and there is a child minder for kids. Kids must have an adult that brings them to the meeting, such as a parent, who can be responsible for them.

From July to September we will make the plans to deal

with the needs.

In the Autumn and Winter of 2009, the community will have lots of opportunity to go over the plans that have been created, suggest changes, and eventually approve the plans as our community’s official CCP.

o What’s happened already with our CCP?

Jessie was hired last May. The summer was spent researching the community, getting to know staff, taking training, and many other pre-planning activities.

On July 29 2008 the CCP Advisory Committee was

started. Advisory Committee meetings are a chance for the community to suggest changes to the way our CCP is being done.

On October 9 2008 there was a CCP Launch at the

Wakas Hall, to introduce the community to the CCP. At

Gwa’sala-’Nakwaxda’xw Comprehensive Community Planning Feb. 16 2009

this launch we showed the 5-minute CCP DVD that kids from the community worked on.

In November we started the CCP planning meetings,

which are still happening.

o March 4 University of Victoria Regional Info Session (UVIC RIS) at Wakas Hall On March 4, staff from the University of Victoria’s

‘Office of Indigenous Affairs’ (INAF) will be coming to spend the day at the Wakas Hall. They will be talking about the programs and services that UVic offers to aboriginal students. Hopefully there will be people (staff & students) coming from all over the North Island, especially the local schools.

I have coordinated this visit, and so we have to take care

of the hall set-up, catering, clean-up and advertising.

o March 26 LIRNBC ‘Building Partnerships Among First Nations & Non-First Nations’ workshop at Wakas Hall On March 26 people from all over the North Island

(about 60 in total) will be coming to the Wakas Hall for a day-long workshop on building partnerships.

Betty’s class will be doing a cultural presentation at the

start of the workshop

I’m coordinating hall set-up, catering and clean-up

o BC Arts Council-funded photography project I got $8,000 in funding from the BC Arts Council to do a

photography project where groups of community members (kids, youth and elders) get disposable cameras and have to take pictures of the community and then explain why they took those pictures. Their pictures will then be blown up and displayed in the community.

o PHSS Career Fair (in the planning stage)

Grace Smith, Marion Hunt and many others are planning a career fair to be held in the summer at the

Gwa’sala-’Nakwaxda’xw Comprehensive Community Planning Feb. 16 2009

high school. We will hopefully be able to participate in the planning for the career fair.

o Suicide Intervention Workshop (in the pre-planning stage)

Need to get together some people to plan a suicide intervention workshop. Bob Swain and Bunny Jackson have both expressed an interest in helping out.

o University of British Columbia partnership

I went to UBC a couple of weeks ago to request that they do some research in our community to help us out. I went to the School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) there, but they have also sent out my request to many different faculties. So far three grad students have expressed an interest in doing projects up here, one faculty member wants to possibly do a course here in community development (where her students would come up and work with the community for a couple of weeks) and the director of UBC’s First Nations Languages program would also like to do a project here. This partnership may grow a lot in the next little while.