Effervescent In Pink

Some days I leave work feeling extremely hopeful. Other days, it can seem quite helpless.

Community planning is an important building block for cities - bringing all stakeholders to the table to coordinate objectives for the long term is important policy to have. But at some point, Community Planners always have to break ties with the very people they have spent months connecting to. Usually when community consultation starts to look too much like social work - aka when people need help the most. Does that make us cognizant of our role, or just manipulative policy whores?

During Phase 1 of this project, our team became involved with a YMCA halfway house in the south of the city that takes orphan boys off the streets. They gave their opinions on a vision for the city, we taught them how to tend a vegetable garden in their yard, and we hooked them up with a mosaic tiler who would mentor them to mosaic using broken plates.

Listening to disadvantaged youth and giving them 'green' skills is undoubtedly a great thing. But Sikhathemba's programming goes far beyond this, and while more boys keep arriving, the financial support is starting to dry up. And they're frustrated and looking for the city to help. So who do they come to? Us, obviously.

The husband asked us to help them secure some paint to spruce up their buildings, and after weeks of trying to put them through to the appropriate channels, T said "screw it" and got a local paint supplier to donate a few buckets of paint. Of course, we'd deliver the paint accompanied by Communications staff and company banners, etc so the donation would be duly noted in a cheesy photo op.

Now this whole activity was beyond what community planners are supposed to do, but we still felt pretty douchey when we showed up and it was obvious that the two buckets of paint were not going to be enough. But we still had to do the photo op regardless. Awkward.

The wife was grateful, but when she showed us around the buildings so we could see all that needed to be done, I wanted so badly to organize a fundraiser right there. Couldn't we do something to help them secure the funds they needed to do this work that is so necessary in the area?

But that's the problem. While it is a true shame that this long-running halfway house is in desperate need of funds, there isn't much now that Community Planning can do to help. Nor should it even if it could, because God knows that dozens of other orgs in the city are in the same situation. This is the last interaction we'll likely have with this group; we'll continue to promote their organization to the "appropriate channels", but really all we can do is pray that this organization that was so helpful to us two years ago will manage to continue the very work that made them so valuable to us in the first place.

Not exactly the "sustainable" future we strive for, is it?

posted by Aleksandra @ 1:32 PM