Downsizing Harbord Village Neighbourhood Footprint

The Transition Harbord Village Group which is part of Transition Toronto wants to inject some new energy into the group to start a second wave of projects. There has been great work done in the past, and we are wanting to get new people involved to start making the Neighbourhood a friendlier place to live. To inspire all of this, we are wanting to use more resources from the neighbourhood, and try to inspire the community to join in our efforts.

To start, if we want to take our individual footprint to the Neighbourhood level, we are going to have to inspire not just people, but the community which includes people, businesses, schools and more. To do this, we are going to have to join with other groups that works in different parts of the neighbourhood and get them to collaborate with each other. With this, there are many people who live all over the neighbourhood, and we need to make everything work for everyone in their area of the neighbourhood. As a community, we need to start to show how the neighbourhood can downsize their footprint. We need to talk to people who already are making change in the neighbourhood, and asking them “How do you feel the neighbourhood can downsize their footprint?” Once, there is enough input, we need to figure out how to get this out to the community. We will need to use the resources in the community that already there to inspire change.

There will need to be information and meeting sessions to get people to come out and start to change the neighbourhood. We need to actively talk to these people to get their feedback on what is working and what needs to be changed. We can’t do this ourselves all the time, we need to inspire people to create change with us.

Taking the inspiration of the City of Toronto Live Green Animators, we will create a way for people to talk to people on the ground in their neighbourhood area who have knowledge on the subject. We are hoping this will inspire others to help out in the neighbourhood as projects are developed.

Really what needs to happen is that projects all over the neighbourhood from place to place need to start, and getting enough people to help out is the key.

Project ideas:

Start a community garden so the neighbourhood can grow its food locally.
Talking to individuals who live in the neighbourhood to get them to understand and maybe come out to see one of our projects.
Maybe saying we need 100% of our energy to come from clean renewable power that is locally based.
Inspire people from the neighbourhood or outside to take a stand and create more bike lanes.
Organize more social events in the area to get people to come out and talk to one another, and do this weekly or bi-weekly or monthly.