Community Engagement
Our events are governed by the question:
“If you could create anything at all for your community, with unlimited time and resources, what would it be?
This asks Surrey residents what they need and what they observe their fellow neighbours need, framed in the context of providing a solution to the problems they’re facing. We plan wide ranges of large and intimate culturally appropriate events to engage different demographics of people, and they always include sharing a meal.
Each event serves as both an incubator and an actualization for the ideas of community members and what they see for our city. For example, our youth basketball tournament was inspired by a youth from a previous community engagement event who had expressed interest in converting parking lots into courts when they were not in use because basketball courts became overcrowded quickly and the conversion would give an unused space an opportunity to be used.
Our largest period of community engagement and research based events occurred in the Summer of 2021, with a dozen events engaging over 500 people in the span of a few months. This work also looked in depth at how residents have coped with the pandemic, the rising cost of groceries and food, and recent extreme weather events.
Our learnings and reflections from that period are currently being compiled into a report by our team - Stay tuned!
If you’re in Surrey and want to organize an initiative, but you don’t have the people power needed to execute it— Contact us! Let’s work together.