Major Project Uses Community Development Skills

With the term coming to an end and most of the courses wrapping up, its time to reflect on what we've learned and what will be carried forward into the future. Our major project interim presentations, taking place at the end of this week, are likely to impress on all in attendance just how much knowledge we have gained thus far. My project in particular, which is to help design a coordinated waste management plan for Saanich school district 63, will incorporate much of the community involvement techniques learned in ENSC 409.

This project is funny because it's basically just a whole bunch of people at the school district who really want to recycle more, and a whole bunch of people who actually are recycling and our job is to communicate between the two groups to tell them how they could all be recycling more. This is perfect because the appropriate prescriptions needed here is a community involvement strategy.
Obviously, there's a lot of teachers and staff (in particular custodial staff) who aren't informed of how easy and economical it is to recycle and they need to be consulted to find out what barriers they are facing that are inhibiting them from recycling and they'd probably rather be able to participate in the implementation of the new plan so that they can feel empowered. All we have to do is get all the parties talking to each other so that they can see each other's perspective.
I guess another aspect of community engagement that we've learned that will be valuable is the whole planning for the future concept. This is especially true in a school atmosphere where so much of the population is so transient and you have policies shifting and changing all the time. Whatever plan does get implemented needs to be dynamic enough to respond to any budget cuts or demoralization of participants or change in recyclable prices allowing the program to last many years into the future.


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