Along with Physician Recruitment and Retention plans and promoting Olds as a Fair Trade community, members of the Community Lifestyle Committee of the Olds Institute have been involved with other projects over the past few years.Some of these include:
- Conducting assessments on known development projects as the opportunities presented themselves, for example:
We are the first contact with developers in terms of lifestyle.
- Taking a leadership role in the establishment of a Municipal Sustainability Plan
- One of the reasons there was a tremendous passion and rallying of people towards the Municipal Sustainability was to institute some preventative and controlling actions that would turn over a preferred future to the young people that would meet their needs. We all know we cannot continue to pull out of the earth's crust at the rate we're going.
- The five dimensions of sustainability in Olds really speak to the Community Lifestyle committee:
- A healthy environment
- A strong economy
- A vibrant cultural scene
- Good governance
- A strong social network
- The Olds Advisory Group for Sustainable Living was instrumental in seeing Olds became the first officially-designated Fair Trade Town in the province of Alberta in November 2009. Attention is given to products produced in an environmentally sustainable manner, that improve the quality of life for people.
- The Town's Trails Task Force may extend its interests to include a plan for a forest reserve. Perhaps Olds will become known as the "Walk-about Community".
- A representative from the Community Lifestyle Committee also sits on the Town's Affordable Housing Task Force.
- The Community Lifestyles Committee hosted a community input session about the social aspects of the Olds Strategic Sustainability Plan in October 2009. Click here to read the complete report.
- The next steps are to:
- Conduct Asset Mapping (inventory, database) of the community's strengths, services needs.
- Build upon existing services
- Involve users and consumers of the services in the discussions and decisions
- Involve all aspects of the community - e.g. businesses
- Foster public awareness of social needs (e.g one idea is a speaker(s) hosted by OIRCD)
- Communicate between agencies and organizations providing services
- Undertake a Social Development and Action Plan with clearly defined vision, mission, goals and actions.
- "Connecting the Dots and Shaping our Future" - On March 20th, 2010, the Community Lifestyles Committee hosted the second Community engagement meeting. The outcomes of March 20th are posted below for your review. The Committee would appreciate your comments on the outcomes.
Lifestyle is considered to be one of the weighted objectives in the assessment of all economic development initiatives. We continue to receive meaningful work.
