Community Development
Contact: Jocelyne Hamel 604-879-8208 ext. 103, email
A strong community is dependent upon the minds, hearts and hands of all its members. At Mount Pleasant Neighbourhood House, we play a vital role in fostering a safe and healthy neighbourhood, with a view towards how we can enhance community development in all we do. Focusing on community strengths and assets, we work with our neighbours, community partners and other organizations to implement a broad range of activities based on community needs and priorities. Our approach includes innovative ways to involve participants in civic processes, and to build capacity — to develop and expand the potential of individuals to become the best that they can be — in our community through mentoring, training, and connecting activities. We also play a key leadership role in many community processes that engage our partners in strengthening our community. We invite you to explore our projects and check this page often for updates and links. Better yet, get involved!Building Welcoming and Inclusive Neighbourhoods (BWIN)
Contact: Blanca Salvatierra 604-879-8208 ext 207, email
BWIN is a project that takes place in 14 neighourhoods in Metro Vancouver, that addresses the many barriers that immigrants and newcomers experience as they settle in their new neighbourhoods. Our goal is to increase cross-cultural awareness, community capacity, and overall participation of immigrants and newcomers in our neighbourhood. The BWIN project builds a welcoming and inclusive neighbourhood by enhancing voluntarism, skills development and leadership programs. We involve volunteers in helping plan and implement capacity building activities such as asset mapping, multicultural dinners, community events, community kitchens and parenting groups, and other social, recreational and educational activities.Citizens In Transition: Youth Community Development
Contact: Thor Larson, 604-879-8208 ext. 122, email
Through this project, the Midtown Youth Service Provider Network was formed to build connections and facilitate collaboration between agencies, to identify assets and gaps, and to create partnerships that work towards enhancing service coordination and provision. Youth voices are vital to our community and this project uses creative approaches to engage youth in civic processes that benefit Mount Pleasant. In its initial phase, the project engaged youth in a photo asset mapping project focusing on how they perceived and experienced their neighbourhood in terms of being a safe, nurturing and evolving place to live. This project enabled youth to contribute to the Mount Pleasant Planning process currently being undertaken by the City of Vancouver in our community and resulted in the youth participants receiving a City of Vancouver Youth Award for their work. Further developing their skills and abilities to engage in civic processes, the youth are now creating short films on community issues of relevance to them which they will use to highlight further changes they would like to see in our neighbourhood.
This project has received high praise from the City of Vancouver Social Planning Department: "[It] is one of the first times that a youth-driven consultation process will directly feed into, and help shape in a very direct way, neighbourhood community planning policy recommendations."
See Mount Pleasant Youth Photo Survey on Facebook, and two videos made by participants, "Art in Mount Pleasant," and "Make A Park."
For more information on the film project please see the Youth in Focus section.