Spring is around the corner! With the celebration of Earth Month Events, the City of Kitchener has supported clean-ups that are now traditional activities in many neighbourhoods. Take a look at suggestions on how to bring neighbours together for environmental action in the March E-Neighbour and make your activity Green Neighbourhood Award worthy!
Toronto West Local Immigration Partnership has organized this February a half-day forum on "Supporting Effective Referrals". One of the topics was "Innovative referral models and promising practices" and our team showcased the multi-year project "Building Information Support to Ontario Newcomers (BLISON)" done in collaboration with InformOntario and the learning opportunities available to the information and the settlement sector in Ontario.
On February 26th, members of the Kitchener-Waterloo VisitAble Housing Task Force met with real estate agents from Kitchener Waterloo Association of Realtors (KWAR) to discuss the benefits of VisitAble Housing in Waterloo Region. Great discussion focused on the spectrum of accessible housing design, and how building more VisitAble homes could impact our community for the better. For more information on VisitAble Housing, visit www.waterlooregion.org/visitable.
Social Planning Council Kitchener-Waterloo has received transitional funding to maintain the Waterloo Region Community Information Database for the first half of 2015. This database is the foundation of our work and connects users to the resources and services in the community. For over 35 years, the Region has provided an annual grant to support our data management work, and this relationship will be changing later this year as the Region moves through a new request for proposal process. Read more about the work at the Social Planning Council and find new ways to connect, such as subscribing to our RSS news feed!
Need something to do with the family this Family Day weekend? Check out our list of stuff to do across the Waterloo Region and beyond this Family Day weekend (February 14-16th, 2015) If we've missed an event, please feel free to email us the details at info@waterlooregion.org.
CLICK HERE: FAMILY DAY EVENTS LIST - 2015
Do you want to find solutions to social issues? Be informed and get involved: become a member of the Social Planning Council of K-W. As a member, you will be kept informed of our activities and about what is happening in the community. Members are invited to provide input and take leadership on issues. Members can vote at our Annual General Meeting and sit on our Board of Directors to guide the future of the organization. Fees vary for individuals and organizations. Complete the membership form here.
Continue reading to find out what residents of Waterloo Region said about the role of a non-government organization such as ours that helps people work on social issues in our community (2014 Omnibus Survey Preliminary Results, PMG Intelligence).
"We applaud the change of language used in the second Ontario Poverty Reduction Strategy that acknowledges the potential of all citizens to prosper. However, neither the 2nd Poverty Reduction
Strategy nor the Fall Economic Update Backgrounder, Supporting A Fair Society, go far enough to articulate the holistic vision and approach needed to eliminate poverty and guide successful social assistance reform in Ontario." Read the whole Poverty Free Kitchener-Waterloo submission to the Ontario pre-budget consultations and make sure to follow updates on our Ontario Budget 2015 page with more submissions to be published.
Are you an individual with a disability living in Waterloo Region, or a parent/caregiver/family member of someone with a disability? Help improve how information is provided to you. Please complete a brief survey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/AWR2015. The survey will be open until Tuesday, February 17, 2015. Please share the survey link with others in your network. 
This year we encourage you to come together with your neighbours to connect with each other and to grow your own traditions. In the January E-Neighbour you can read about neighbourhoods tha come together each year, month or week and the impact those activities have on their families and their communtiy. We hope you will jump on the "traditions bandwagon" and register all activities and events. The first Early Bird registrations deadline is January 13th!
The budget process is underway across Ontario. Since January, delegations presented before the Minister of Finance and before the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs. The Government has set up an online consultation tool to gather even more input on how to deliver on the announced priorities. You can have your say through written submission, by phone, by fax, on the online forum and through social media. We have published some useful documents to help you prepare, and we are sharing submissions other organizations have made. Be informed and be involved!
We are a trusted facilitator of community engagement processes for consultation, problem solving and action planning. We have also been the stewards of community information since 1971.