Transcriber: Krystian Aparta Reviewer: Sherry Chen
So in case you didn't know it, where we live matters.
It matters in positive ways
and it also matters in not so positive ways.
This community has known that for a while,
but in 2010 we were jarred yet again and reminded,
that where we live matters.
We were jarred by information that talked
about not how we in certain areas of our city
fare against others,
but how certain parts of our community fare
in relation to other parts of our community.
The information was generated out of work at McMaster University.
It was branded in a way that, unfortunately, more recently,
has become a bit of a negative brand,
you can read the branding in the brochure that you have today.
So I talk about the research because that's what's really important.
And caught up in that 2010 swell of information
and what can we do to level the playing fields across neighborhoods
and across the populations in our community,
I ended being swept out of a job that I loved at a non-profit organization
and landed at city hall.
And I'm a basketball referee, not that bright, just ask any coach.
(Laughter)
One coach said to me one day,
"You know, Paul, why players can only stand three seconds in the key?
It's because that's only how high you can count."
So, I'm sitting at city hall,
caught up in this sense of what are we going to do
about neighborhoods and our community?
How will the city play its position?
And scared to death about exactly what we would do.
But there is good news in our community
because we have some things that have been going on in Hamilton for quite some time
that gave me a bit of background.
Our community foundation has been deeply committed to understanding
how people can work together at a local level
and create change.
We have non profit organizations, community groups
that are not registered
that have been working for years and doing incredible things,
so we had lots to draw on.
And I'd known about the work of John McKnight
and about asset based community development for years.
And as I thought about what we might try and do
and push as an idea for how to change
some of those statistics over time in our community
about how neighborhoods were faring in comparison to other neighborhoods,
I said: "What better place to start than asset-based community development?"
And in Hamilton, we did just that.
In Hamilton we decided that instead
of trying to figure out ways in boardrooms
and closed sessions with a few people about how to change
the way this community was moving forward,
we'd actually go out and ask a pretty simple question,
"how would you", groups of residents within areas of our community,
"how would you set forward a plan, to make this a healthier place
to live, work, play, learn."
How would institutions then play their role to help,
not tell, communities what needed to be done
but support communities in the directions they were already wanting to move.
And secondly, how instead of constantly putting up that list of needs,
would we start instead by putting up a list of our assets.
We should never bury our heads
in the sand about the troubles
and the issues and the challenges that face our community
but starting from an asset based approach
is a very different way of coming at issues.
Adding up the collective abilities that are in the room of the individuals,
of institutions, of the places of our community and saying,
that is the place we're going to start to change our city
or our neighborhood or our country.
That's the way to do business.
And so we did just that.
In neighborhoods we sat down with residents,
we met physically in assets in their neighborhoods.
This is the "Two Cougars & a Cafe" on Burlington street.
Anybody ever been there?
Fantastic neighborhood joint.
They opened up in the evening for our meeting and put on a great spread,
We met in the neighborhood,
we met and celebrated an asset in the neighborhood
and started to talk about what we might do next.
In the Stinson neighborhood,
just a little bit east of where we are today,
proud of their history and their heritage,
we met in a wonderful heritage home.
Completely ridiculous from a meeting perspective
but wonderful from a neighborhood asset perspective.
We had notes being taken with people with their knee up
and the computer jammed up against the wall,
and we had people in corners and nooks and crannies.
But it was a chance for us to celebrate what was about that neighborhood
and start a conversation in a place that represented the assets that were there.
We met in parks and we started the plan, again,
not in closed sessions or in public information centers,
those wonderful bureaucratic ways,
we started the plan where people were.
And residents were involved and in charge
of setting priorities and talking with their neighbors
and with their fellow residents and businesses
and neighborhood associations
and neighborhood groups,
over what they wanted.
And we did business propped up against fences,
we did business with things tacked on trees,
not in a way that would damage the tree long term,
but in ways that would allow us to use
the physical and natural elements of the neighborhood
and have conversations, where quite frankly,
better creativity happens.
If we're going to talk about park redevelopment
why don't we go into the park?
I've never met a boardroom that can replicate what a park looks like.
We came up with plans
and the structure and the style of them is not important,
what is important is the fact that residents committed to being part,
not only of the planning of the actions that were taking place in neighborhoods
but they wanted to be part of the implementation.
And in every action that's going on
in neighborhoods across this community,
the residents themselves are saying, "yes we're committed to this,
yes we have collective ownership of where this community is going."
And when it came to getting political buy in for this
we said, "these are our plans, it's not Paul Johnson's plans,
it's not the city of Hamilton's plan, it's your plans.
So they celebrated at city hall,
they met with our mayor, resident leaders and said,
"here's the plans we have."
They came with their friends and their neighbors and their family members
and they packed city hall.
They had to remove the glass barriers in city hall
so that people could sit in the foyer and listen to their colleagues
talk about their plan.
Only once in our history as an amalgamated city
that we had a larger gathering at city hall for business of city hall
and it was when water meters were going in.
(Laughter)
Because they didn't want the city
coming into their houses,
right and putting in water meters.
So we're there in numbers saying,
"this is the community that we want to be a part of
and we are the community that we want to make."
But what's wonderful about neighborhood work
that's happening here in Hamilton today,
is when you see the assets in action.
We saw the assets in action in terms of talking about where we were
as a community and the plans residents had in their minds
about where they wanted
to take their neighborhoods
and the implementation of those plans which is where we'll be judged as a city,
is what's really exciting right now.
So let's talk a little bit about those assets in action
and we're going to try
and make sure that technically,
we make this work for the rest of the time as well.
So let's talk about little Oliver; the time this picture was taken,
Oliver was eight years old.
Oliver was gardening with his sister and his parents
and selling the vegetables he was growing to his neighbors
and raising money for children's charities in his community.
Oliver decided it would be a good idea to get a grant
so that he could teach more people
to grow their own vegetables in their backyard
and hopefully help more kids in his community.
Now, let me tell you, I was a fundraiser at RCFMU radio station back
when I was sports director and with, at that time,
two years of university education under my belt
and a radio station behind me,
I raised a whopping 2500 bucks for our sports program.
Oliver got ten times that and he hadn't even reached his tenth birthday.
(Laughter)
To suggest that we don't have assets
at all ages and all abilities in our community is false.
We do, and Oliver is a tremendous example.
He led an education session in Gage park,
teaching people how to grow vegetables in their gardens.
I got a phone call one day at city hall from our I.T. department,
I figured I had installed something I shouldn't have on my computer
and that they were going to reprimand me,
but instead they said,
"Paul, we've heard you talk about assets and what we can bring to the table
and we want to help out this neighborhood work that's emerging."
I said, "great, what's your idea?"
and they said,
"As the city of Hamilton, we are hosting
The Municipal Information Services Association Conference."
And I said, "you'll have to excuse me, I don't know what that is."
They said, "It's a bunch of us geeks in I.T
that get together every once in a while and talk about things
the Municipality should think about with technology which is wonderful,
but the vendors that come to that event we'd like to tap on the shoulder and say,
'how are you helping out our neighborhoods when you visit the city?'"
Those vendors that they tapped on the shoulder did two things:
they raised enough resources to make sure
that every planning group
we're working with at our initial phase of neighborhood action in the city
had computers, laptops, so that the notes and the ideas could be captured well
by everyone who was working on them at the neighborhood level.
And the second thing they did
is they wanted to connect people physically to their neighborhoods
and so they purchased bikes for families.
Not just bikes for kids but bikes for families,
helmets and locks and we went off and had a great day
celebrating families, working together
and having a chance to explore their neighborhoods together
getting the bikes and making sure that we could get them back to the homes
or HSR folks came along and said,
"we've got ways to keep all those bikes in touch"
and we made sure it all got back to their residences O.K.
People coming forward and saying, "what is it that I can do?"
In parks we've been bringing out people
to start to do work in their parks, a fairly traditional activity
but I can tell you that these folks that are working on their park
are going one step further.
They in the midst of a three year project
to completely transform not only their park area
but also the community center that's across the street
to create a large scale civic square.
They wanted to be the bumping space in their community.
You know that place where you bump into the people in your neighborhood.
How do we create more of those spaces, so that we could reduce crime,
so we can increase social cohesion,
so that we can increase the kinds of activities
that make for strong, healthy neighborhoods.
It's about involving everyone, in that work.
And then we had an interesting call,
groups of funders that had got together and said,
"We'd like to support somehow this neighborhood work,
I've been reading the plans that residents have been creating,
and so we'd like to do two things:
we'd like to train people to get back to work
and we'd like to beautify neighborhoods.
And it led to the neighborhood home improvement program.
Take unemployed individuals from neighborhoods and give them
training in the basics of construction.
The construction projects that offer the training opportunities
were exterior renovations to homes in the community.
This is the picture of Anna's back yard.
The city, in its nice way, came along and said,
"That structure's unsafe, it's got to come down."
We were going to tell her to tear down the shed
that housed all the things that she liked and needed for gardening
and at the same time her fence wasn't looking too great either.
And in fact, the fence had become a bit of a problem
because when her grand-kids visited,
they weren't allowed to go out in the backyard and play in the community
because she was afraid they'd sneak out,
she was afraid other things from the neighborhood might sneak in.
And she was worried about that.
So the program came along.
She dubbed these individuals, all out of work and looking
for opportunities to train and get back into the workforce,
she called them her "hard hat angels."
And they ripped everything down and they built stuff up.
And if you want to see the transformation,
here's the shed, now fully functional.
The fence, brand new, but what's truly exciting is,
that crew came back after hours and did something a little special.
You see the garden on the right side of the screen?
What letter is that upside down?
"A," for Anna.
They built Anna, a little bit of a garden with her first name.
The crew chief on this, came back the next day and said,
"When did this get done?" and they said,
"We came back after, you know why? Because this is our neighborhood,
and we're here not just getting training
and doing the 9 to 5 thing,
we're to make this a better neighborhood."
One of the great things that's going on in our community
is people are trying to find ways of connecting with each other.
We now have four neighborhood broadsheets.
They're been handed out to up to 50 thousand residents
residents and businesses in the community.
This one is from the Sherman neighborhood I believe.
You've probably seen,
I think I saw a copy floating round here,
of "The Point" from Crown Point.
The StinZine, from Stinson community is just about to launch,
and in the Gibson and Landsdale neighborhoods, there's The Herald.
These are ways and sustainable ways for people to remain connected.
Almost all have asked for a little bit of seed money to start up.
None have asked for any money after that.
The community itself is finding ways to sustain these things because these are
the ways residents and neighborhoods communicate good information.
So we are transforming spaces, that were once dark places were people
would hang out and do nasty things, into gardens.
There is a transformation in the community to take back public space
and make it into something that comes alive.
And these are some of the folks that are doing it.
This is the leadership of just a few of the community organizations in Hamilton
that are taking ownership of their neighborhood
and asking everyone in this city to join with them.
At one of those council presentations, there was a great moment,
where an individual from one of the neighborhoods
looked all of our counselors and the mayor in the eye
and said, "This is our neighborhood plan and we're going to implement it,
we'd love it if you helped out because it will make it go a little faster
we'll perhaps, achieve things in a bigger way, but make no mistake,
this is our plan and we're going to implement it."
That is that wonderful moment of ownership.
And a little more than a month ago,
we invited a whole bunch of partners together to celebrate,
not celebrate mission accomplished because we haven't quite got there yet,
but to celebrate, in the first three years of working together some of the things
that we've accomplished.
These were institutions, education, healthcare,
residents from the neighborhood level,
non profit organizations,
in the room saying, "we are committed to neighborhood action."
And what's coming out of it are the kind of next big steps
that make us, I think, excited about the future,
because it's through these conversations about what residents are really saying
are the paths forward for their communities.
The things like, the movement of a children's health facility
from a suburban location that was difficult to access
to a downtown location that is easy to access
and more importantly an engagement model,
that's going to see that facility have a community use
as well as the clinical use.
It's were those conversations start to see large scale transformation.
It's where policies will get discussed to allow us to take the next step.
Beyond projects at the neighborhood level to see long lasting change.
I hope someday this is the sign that we see coming into our community
because the ones now all have a different population number on them,
so I'm not sure they're overly useful anyways.
(Laughter)
But this is the kind of thing we want to see.
I'm not here today to say that we have found a way
to transform the statistics that we saw in 2010,
turn them around on their head
and that next year you'll see a report that says we've made it all the way,
but I believe that we're on the path to doing things the right way.
It is about what we can collectively bring as our assets
to issues and challenges that confront our community.
And if we do it that way, we'll be successful.
Thank you.
(Applause)