Vital Signs making impact on Sunshine Coast

The Sunshine Coast Community Foundation published its first Vital Signs report in 2009.

It was a major accomplishment for our foundation, which became a registered charity and a member of Community Foundations of Canada in 2003. We are a completely volunteer organization, with a 12-person board of directors and 25 additional volunteers. We are one of the smallest community foundations to undertake a Vital Signs report.

The report confirmed that the number of area youth who were unemployed or receiving income assistance was higher than the provincial averages.

At the Foundation’s strategic planning session in January, we decided to convene a gathering of community stakeholders to address this critical issue on the Sunshine Coast, a linear community stretching approximately 85 kilometres along the coast of British Columbia, just northwest of Vancouver. The area’s population is about 28,000, concentrated in Gibsons, Sechelt and Pender Harbour.

While historically a primary resource industry area, recent years have brought a sharp decline in forestry and fishing. The Sunshine Coast has become a popular retirement community, as well as a tourist destination, due to the lure of the nearby mountains and ocean.

This has brought challenges to young adults living in the area, including high housing costs, lack of good paying jobs related to the decline of primary industries, and lack of social amenities due to the small population.

In response, the community foundation created a one-day workshop called Attracting, Retaining and Employing Young Adults, in consultation with the community and with funding from several sources including our three local governments.

More than 50 people attended, including a representation of young working adults, employers, elected officials and senior staff from local government, trades program representatives from the local school district, university, training agencies and our employment agency.

At the end of the day, a task force was identified to take the project further. It includes two working groups: one to take the ideas identified at the workshop and create a draft strategic plan with long- and short-term solutions to this issue and the second working group to propose a partnership/organizational structure to move the strategic plan forward.

The task force was asked to report back to the workshop attendees with their proposed strategies and structure in a one-day event planned for later this fall.

Enthusiasm for this initiative is high in the community and there has been positive media attention.

The Foundation is delighted that Vital Signs has enjoyed success in our community by bringing this and other issues forward. We feel that the 2009 Report has a shelf life of two years or more, which is why we will once again embark on Vital Signs in 2011.

That said, a Vital Signs management team is now working in consultation with the community on a two-page update report that we will publish as a centrefold in our local newspaper on Oct. 8 and on the Vital Signs page of our website.

Don Basham is Board Secretary and Vital Signs Manager for Sunshine Coast Community Foundation