The Vancouver area community boards in action project sprang out of several conversation we were having around a discussion paper put out by the Federation of Community social services called Social Policy Frameworks in Canada.
When Doug mentioned how hard it was to find common projects to bring the Vancouver area agencies together, we suggested getting the largest five Vancouver area agencies together to discuss a SPF, see if they were all supportive of the idea, and how we could move it forward.
Judy Hayes loved the idea and wrote the application.
Lyn Carter’s board Greater Vancouver Community Services Society liked it so much they ponied up a big chunk of cash to help get the conversation going.
We held a meeting on 23 May and drafted a call to action called “There is a Better Way” and the five agency boards endorsed the document.
We created a PowerPoint for presentation to boards that are considering the declaration.
So far, 17 agencies have since signed on.
We have has two op-eds in the Vancouver Sun on the Social Policy Framework Concept.
We now have a Masters level group at SFU preparing a study on how BC makes social policy now, how it might develop a SPF and how that might affect public policy in the province. They will report out in March or April. Some of them are here today.
From these conversations we invited our keynote speaker from Alberta to talk about how they started the creation of a Social Policy Framework in Alberta. We will hear from her tomorrow.
We have asked all of our board agencies to join the declaration and are now going out to all our member agencies to ask them to join the declaration.
We had a meeting earlier this week, with Hilde, Vantage Point, the CEOs of United Way and the Vancouver Foundation and have begun a conversation about how all of us might work together to make this a reality in BC.
All of the documents about this are on the Board Voice website under initiatives.
This is a huge idea. Whether it becomes a SPF is unknown. But just the conversation is good for our agencies, our sector and the people we serve in the province.