Are you participating in Highland Park’s Block Connector program? Our Block Connector program is supported by the HPCA Board, in partnership with our City of Calgary Social Worker, Jennifer DiMarzo, and Lauren Mangion from Carya. It is designed to connect community residents on a hyper-local level, such as on the same block or adjacent blocks. Each Block Connector volunteer selected for their role has been interviewed, passed a Police Check, and has received some training from our organizing team. We are still looking for more Block Connectors and for more residents to just sign up to participate in the program. You can sign up for either role using our secure survey.
If your area has a volunteer Block Connector already, you should have received a flyer in your mailbox with some information about the program, and some ideas for block-level activities. If you didn’t receive a recent flyer about the program in your mailbox, your block doesn’t yet have a Block Connector, so why don’t you think about filling this role? Go for a walk or bike ride around your block and look for the new lawn signs we had printed to identify our Block Connectors.
Our Block Connectors have coordinated some fun activities and opportunities to connect, such as a Scavenger Hunt for Neighbour Day and block-level Facebook groups. The reports we heard back was that our residents have been able to meet more of their neighbours, which is what it’s all about! We are looking at other activities over the next few months because this darn COVID-19 thing isn’t going away for a while. We’d love to hear your ideas too, so please sign up and connect with us!
I’m sure you read in last month’s newsletter about the mini-garden community-building project that Highland Park CA has been working on with Carya. Well, we are thinking we’d like to do a bit of a garden walking tour in September, to look at what some of these projects are, as well as some of the awesome gardens that community residents have if they are willing to show them off. We’d like to see if we can video these spots to put together a virtual tour also. Do you have an awesome garden you could show off and share some of your horticultural knowledge? Do you have a decent video camera that we could film some of these locations and make a garden tour video to post on our website? To volunteer, or for more information about the Block Connector program or the gardening project program, you can reach out to our organizing team for more information: contact Anne at volunteer@hpca.ca, or Rosalind at seniorscoordinator@hpca.ca, Jennifer from City of Calgary at jdimarzo@calgary.ca, or Lauren from Carya at laurenm@caryacalgary.ca.