Healthy Cities For All leadership workshop brings together community champions to create collective impacts
July 16, 2014
Last week Kevin McCort participated in the Healthy Cities For All leadership workshop held by the City of Vancouver whose purpose is to encourage collaboration in hitting 2025 goals. This working group is comprised of champions from a number of sectors throughout the city such as senior government, early childhood development, social justice, public health, business, education, arts and culture, and senior city staff.
The City Of Vancouver is committed to becoming a healthier city. The 2025 Healthy City strategy outlines 12 long term goals and targets in areas ranging from early childhood education, affordable housing, food sustainability and connections and engagement. The goals are set, but exactly how to meet the targets is an evolving process.
Last week, Kevin McCort, CEO and President of Vancouver Foundation, participated in the Healthy Cities For All leadership workshop held by the City of Vancouver. Leaders from across the City gathered together to collaborate and co-design opportunities to support reaching the 2025 goals .
“There’s been a lot of conversation within the sector about collective impact. Because the City is clearly identifying what it’s objectives are, the funders and actors in each sector are able to identify elements that fit within their fields of interest and say – ‘This is my piece of the puzzle’.”
“After attending the workshop, what struck me is that we could look at our own granting objectives with these specific goals in mind. And that’s a very useful approach for us, because the City of Vancouver consults with thousands of people as they define this strategy, and going forward, when we choose to align with a goal, we will know it’s informed by a consultation process that we can really respect. Knowing that our goals are reflective of community priorities is a benefit for everyone involved.”
Mapping Vancouver Foundation’s field of interest objectives (where possible) to align with City goals would also improve the quality of information to determine if the strategies are effective at meeting those goals. Vancouver Foundation granted almost $50 million in 2013 in a variety of fields, and improving the quality of information sharing and reporting would create more benefit to the City as well.
“Our participation in the City’s leadership table is a positive example of a community foundation in partnership with a major municipal authority. And it’s not just work that we can do, but work that all community foundations can do with their cities.”
Find out more about Healthy City 2025 Goals and Targets:
Find out more about Vancouver Foundation and the City of Vancouver’s Greenest City collaboration: