What’s next?
How did we get here?
On May 16, 2019, after 18 months of research and extensive community engagement, our community presented A United Vision: Guelph’s Community Plan to City Council. See what happened that night:
The Community Plan became the foundational vision for the City’s Strategic Plan. It has also helped spark conversations at the City and in the community about how we can work together across sectors for greater collective impact. The Plan has informed various master plans at the City and has been used by organizations in the community for their own strategic planning.
Where do we go from here?
The Community Plan is a living document designed to support more community conversations as we discover and face different challenges. For all its strengths, Guelph’s Community Plan does not specifically address systemic racism.
We know it should, and we are looking to our community partners for leadership, guidance and support to ensure that we are building on the strengths of the Plan to help promote diversity, inclusion and anti-racism in Guelph.
Our goal: eliminate systemic racism
As a municipality and the conveners of Guelph’s Community Plan, we have set our sights on this powerful goal: to set the community standard for the elimination of systemic racism. As a member of our community with a unique perspective and vision to contribute, we hope you’ll join us on this journey.
Getting started
Our first step is to connect with the people and organizations most affected by systemic racism in our community—Guelph’s Black, Indigenous, People of Colour (BIPOC) communities. Marva Wisdom, a well-respected community builder and the external lead and co-chair of the Community Plan, is conducting this outreach on behalf of the City. We are asking community members, organizations, and leaders to help us understand the breadth and depth of the issues and choices before us—the areas of greatest need and what steps we need to take together.
As part of this first step, we will connect with our community partners to:
- Gain a deeper understanding of the local impact of systemic racism in Guelph
- Share the City’s readiness for action and change
- Measure support for this community-driven approach
- Identify champions of change
- Discuss our goals for this work
- Facilitate listening and information sharing to help identify the steps we must take to eliminate systemic racism
- Assess, test and validate what we hear so we can work together to develop a plan to move forward as a community to make lasting, meaningful, comprehensive change
If you’re working to eliminate systemic racism in our community, we want to hear from you. Please reach out to Marva at [email protected].
Join us
If you’re one of the many Guelph organizations that provide services, products, employment and expertise in our community, you are a part of the solution. There will be many ways to support this work. The first step is for you to get in touch.
Please reach out to:
Glen Lombard
Manager, Community Engagement
519-822-1260 extension 3957
[email protected]
Implementing the Community Plan
Guelph’s Community Plan presents a vision for the next 10 years and more—a vision shaped and co-created by the community. To keep momentum, the City will continue to work together with the residents, organizations and businesses that helped build the Plan.
We will use international frameworks (World Council on City Data ISO Standard 37120) and local frameworks such as Toward Common Ground and The Guelph Community Foundation’s Vital Signs to measure our progress as a community.