Our Community

Community engagement is a core piece of the council's mission and essential for conducting community-based research, supporting community and regional planning processes and bringing people together to address community issues.

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2019-2020

Stay connected to resources, research and events in your community!

Community Engagement Throughout the Years

Participatory Budgeting

This year, we were chosen as a finalist in the 2020 City of Victoria's Participatory Budgeting. We engaged with community members, partners and friends through our social media networks and mailing lists encouraging people to participate in the vote!

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Point-in-Time Homeless Count Volunteers

We coordinated our third one-day Point-in-Time Count of homeless people in the region on March 12, 2020 and had 175 citizen volunteers and 85 participating agencies.

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Can't Stay Can't Go: Renters Roundtable

A study completed by us and the Victoria Tenants Action Group, Can’t Stay and Can’t Go: A participatory action research project on rental housing instability in Greater Victoria, brings forward renter voices about lived experiences in today’s housing crisis. Nearly 500 renters participated in the online survey and in-person round tables.

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Youth Pathways: Engaging with Youth

In the fall of 2014, we hosted 6 focus groups in different locations across Greater Victoria and talked to 33 individual youth who identified as experiencing or being at-risk of homelessness. We also surveyed 50 youth who gave us important information about the circumstances that led them to where they were. Our team also talked to 7 service providers who work with at-risk, unstably housed, and homeless youth.

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Local Waster into Local Jobs: Stakeholder Engagement

In the fall of 2009, 40 participant agencies were selected from the 2009 Capital Region Food Resource Directory on the criteria that they had some form of meal provision program in place. Agency programs were diverse in nature, including food cupboards, community kitchens, meal provision and food banks covering a broad range of focus groups including youth, natives, elderly, families and women.

The survey was completed in October though December 2009, with 20 agencies in the Capital Region and surrounding areas including Sooke, Sidney and Langford.

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Food Matters! Forum

Every year, the Food Matters! Forum focuses on something that deepens and broadens our collective work around food in the region. In 2010, the CSPC looked at how we can use social media to connect and coordinate our work as well as utilize it to reach further with our communication efforts. A workshop on social media and how groups around the region was held, as well our keynote speaker at lunch Dr. Gilbert Wilkes challenged us to consider Social Media and our ability to “separate the signal from the noise".

Approximately 85 people attended the Forum, held at the Victoria Native Friendship Centre.

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Tool Kits, Guides & Facts Sheets

Family Day Fact Sheet: February 2021 Ready to Work Youth Assessment Tool Kit Ready to Work Employer Assessment Tool Kit Affordable Housing for BC’s Capital Region: Tools for the Future Innovating Seniors Housing Guide(s) Capital Region Housing Data Book The Happiness Booklet Service Continuity Planning Guide for Community-Based Organizations Ten Ways to Keep and Attract Your Staff Capital Region Food Resource Directory Employer Quick Reference Card Legislation Affecting the Hiring and Retention of People with Barriers to Employment: A Guide for Employers HR Options for Action: Build your Business and Community Factsheets on Affordability in BC’s Capital Region: 2004

Family Day Fact Sheet: February 2021

No Family Left Behind

As we celebrate this family day, lets all take a moment and reflect on policies needed to properly support families living in the Greater Victoria Region and think of ways we can give back to our community and help support those who need it.

Ready to Work Youth Assessment Tool Kit

Ready to Work Employer Assessment Tool Kit

Just as youth need to have the skills to find, get and keep a job, employers need the right skills to attract, select and retain youth employees. In both cases, this starts with preparation and continues throughout the employment relationship. Companies that have a corporate social responsibility (CSR) mandate see developing young people within their business as a key element to sustainability.

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Affordable Housing for BC’s Capital Region: Tools for the Future

This initiative emerged out of a widespread and shared concern that the supply of affordable market housing needed to be the focus of renewed attention in the region. While social housing development associated with the Homelessness Action Plan continues to be a priority, there was concern that the “upstream” component of the housing continuum (affordable rental housing) also needed attention.

The Community Social Planning Council, Victoria Real Estate Board, and the Capital Regional District came together in 2011 to review developments in the region and elsewhere, and resolved, with the support of the Real Estate Foundation of BC, to examine what kinds of tools might be available to municipalities and the regional district to enable affordable housing development in the future.

Download the Tools for the Future

Innovating Seniors Housing Guide(s)

The Capital Region has one of the highest concentrations of retired community members in the country already. And it is set to increase. We along with the Canadian Senior Cohousing Society are asking community leaders, innovators, change-makers, and forward-thinking members of our community – of all ages – to come together to move our communities towards a new model of caring for each other as we age.

In 2016, we created a Primer, a Report and Guides that are intended to support land use and real estate policy and practices by providing current research on successful and innovative models of housing developments that meet the continuum of need and demand for senior housing.

Download the 'Primer'

Download the 'Complete Guide to Cohousing' Guide

Download the 'How to Create New-Build Cohousing' Guide

Download the 'How to Create Retrofit Cohousing' Guide

Capital Region Housing Data Book

The Capital Region Housing Data Book is the first comprehensive collection of data related to housing in the capital region. The book is modeled on the Metro Vancouver Housing data book and provides detailed data for the capital region as a whole, and for each municipality and Electoral Area on population and income distributions related to housing, housing market indicators, and housing need with focused sections of housing choices for renter households, and housing choices for owner households.

Each thematic section of the Data Book provides a description of the data being presented and a summary of the most notable findings.

Download the Data Book

The Happiness Booklet

Service Continuity Planning Guide for Community-Based Organizations

The purpose of this document is to assist Community-Based Organizations, i.e. locally-based Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), in the creation of a Service Continuity Plan, so that the agency will be able to maintain or quickly resume operations after a service interruption.

This document is targeted towards a disruption caused by a pandemic influenza, but it can have a broader use in addressing other hazards that might cause interruption of service.

Download the Guide

Ten Ways to Keep and Attract Your Staff

Capital Region Food Resource Directory

The 2009 Capital Region Food Resources Directory provides information on local agencies and their food related programs. Information from the “Community Food and Meals Survey”, a partnership project between the Vancouver Island Health Authority, the University of Victoria and the Salvation Army, was updated to be included in this Directory.

This Directory is intended to be used as an information and networking tool – to more easily identify where food is available, and where surplus food can be directed.

Download the Directory

Employer Quick Reference Card

Legislation Affecting the Hiring and Retention of People with Barriers to Employment: A Guide for Employers

Over the course of the Labour Market Dialogues, it has become clear that employers need information about the various provincial and federal laws that can affect their efforts to increase the hiring and retention of employees who face barriers to employment. The Community Council has produced Legislation Affecting the Hiring and Retention of People with Barriers to Employment: A Guide for Employers to help meet this need.

The guide provides basic information about five provincial and federal laws, whom they apply to, and their implications for more inclusive hiring and retention practices. The five laws are shown in the table below, along with their jurisdiction (federal or provincial), purpose, and the agency or program that is responsible for ensuring compliance. There is also a brief section on the role of unions.

Download the Guide

HR Options for Action: Build your Business and Community

In 2006, the CSPC collaborated with organizations across different sectors and created The HR Options for Action: Build your Business and Community booklet that provides your organization with HR tips on how to answer the million dollar question(s) of:

HOW TO Boost Employee Productivity

HOW TO Reduce Staff Turnover, Retain Staff

HOW TO Develop Employee Knowledge

HOW TO Increase Employee Morale

Download the Booklet

Factsheets on Affordability in BC’s Capital Region: 2004