A healthy, thriving, family friendly community. That’s the vision many Trail residents have for the city, and more than 140 residents recently helped create a plan to make it happen.
It’s called Thriving for All: A Plan for Healthy Communities in Our Rural City, and it focuses on reducing or eliminating poverty as the key to a healthy community.
“The biggest barrier to community health is poverty. We looked for strategies and actionable goals to reduce poverty and promote healthy communities. That’s how we can create a thriving community for everyone,” says Heather Glenn-Dergousoff, poverty reduction specialist at the Skills Centre.
Community engagement built the new plan
“We want the people who participated in our community engagement activities, the people who helped create this plan, to know that their voices were heard, and we are using their contributions to guide us,” says Trail Mayor Colleen Jones. “Members of our community shared ideas, asked questions and identified possible actions that we can collectively implement to better support a thriving population.”
The Skills Centre and the City of Trail have been collaborating on a project to end working poverty in Trail for the past three years. The new plan is one of the outcomes. Their goal was to enhance supports and services by updating existing community plans, including the city’s poverty reduction plan and healthy communities plan from 2017.
They created a leadership table of community members from diverse backgrounds and experiences, including individuals with lived experience of working poverty.
Heather led the community engagement process throughout 2024. More than 140 people gave input through public engagement events, collective problem-solving, surveys or leadership tables.
“Community engagement went really well. People contributed the ideas and experiences that built this plan. The plan was built on what people said to us,” she says. She presented the plan to Trail City Council in October. The hope is that council will adopt the plan early this year.
The Skills Centre is focusing on physical activity and community belonging through the Common Access Card; food security; and the living wage, which is part of an inclusive and vibrant economy.
A call to action
This report only covers a small piece of the work that the Skills Centre and other non-profits are doing, she says, as well as only a small piece of the work that has to be done.
“Support for events such as Coldest Night of the Year is so important because it directly supports poverty reduction activities in our communities,” she adds.
Watch for more information on the living wage with a call to action for business owners to commit to becoming living wage employers.
Be the first to know! Don’t miss out on breaking news and daily updates in your area. Sign up to MyKootenayNow News Alerts.
