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Sean Douglas has faith that a little hard work will help revitalize his Queen Mary Park neighbourhood.
The 36-year-old community league president got busy on Saturday doing just that with a community cleanup day. He hopes that if others see that he and his neighbours care about their community, it will scare off "illegitimate users" of the area.
"It`s a great neighbourhood, but we are almost an inner-city neighbourhood," he says. "As a result, there are challenges. There are lots of prostitutes, johns, and drug dealers."
Douglas originally moved into the Queen Mary Park neighbourhood just north of downtown 12 years ago because the rent was cheap. He`d just finished school and moved west from Ontario for work as an engineer. He fell in love with the centrally located, mature community, and ended up buying a house in the area.
He`s excited about the revitalization project the city has begun in Queen Mary Park and Central McDougall, and he hopes that the results will go beyond the cosmetic.
"I think people hear revitalization and they think that the city is going to swoop in and redo some roads and sidewalks, when it`s actually a lot more involved than that," he says. "It`s a long-term plan. This isn`t going to happen in one season." As he`s seen in his own backyard, though, many of the challenges facing the communities are long-term social problems.
That`s where Vibrant Communities Edmonton comes in. The local chapter of the national poverty reduction group has announced that it will work alongside the city with the revitalization project, filling in the community economic development side that is necessary for sustainable communities but which the city doesn`t have a mandate for, says Janice Melnychuk, the executive director of Vibrant Communities Edmonton and a former city councillor.
"We are a catalyst," she says. "We`ll bring knowledge from other parts of the country and the world to this community to see if we can spark something and foster some change, and different thinking."
Read the full article here.
The 36-year-old community league president got busy on Saturday doing just that with a community cleanup day. He hopes that if others see that he and his neighbours care about their community, it will scare off "illegitimate users" of the area.
"It`s a great neighbourhood, but we are almost an inner-city neighbourhood," he says. "As a result, there are challenges. There are lots of prostitutes, johns, and drug dealers."
Douglas originally moved into the Queen Mary Park neighbourhood just north of downtown 12 years ago because the rent was cheap. He`d just finished school and moved west from Ontario for work as an engineer. He fell in love with the centrally located, mature community, and ended up buying a house in the area.
He`s excited about the revitalization project the city has begun in Queen Mary Park and Central McDougall, and he hopes that the results will go beyond the cosmetic.
"I think people hear revitalization and they think that the city is going to swoop in and redo some roads and sidewalks, when it`s actually a lot more involved than that," he says. "It`s a long-term plan. This isn`t going to happen in one season." As he`s seen in his own backyard, though, many of the challenges facing the communities are long-term social problems.
That`s where Vibrant Communities Edmonton comes in. The local chapter of the national poverty reduction group has announced that it will work alongside the city with the revitalization project, filling in the community economic development side that is necessary for sustainable communities but which the city doesn`t have a mandate for, says Janice Melnychuk, the executive director of Vibrant Communities Edmonton and a former city councillor.
"We are a catalyst," she says. "We`ll bring knowledge from other parts of the country and the world to this community to see if we can spark something and foster some change, and different thinking."
Read the full article here.