Urban Exchange

The weather has been fantastic over the past several days and it finally feels like summer is here! While Urban Exchange will continue to be abuzz with activity (poverty survey analysis, information-sharing meetings, report-writing, planning for next questionnaire, etc.), Working Group members will be taking a break until September.

At today’s year-end wrapup meeting, Working Group volunteers reflected on a successful year and talked about plans for the fall. A few highlights?

• More than 2800 Winnipeggers participated in our conversation about poverty. In one month! If you filled out the survey, thanks!
• Of those Winnipeggers, a significant number said they have a household income of less than $20,000/year. We’ll report on demographics in the fall, but so far it’s looking like we were able to reach a wide cross-section of people.
• We trained – and paid – several people living in low-income neighbourhoods to do face-to-face interviews with their neighbours.
• Through social media like blogs, Facebook and Twitter, a lot of you helped spread the word about Urban Exchange.

Speak Up Winnipeg, the City of Winnipeg’s new engagement process, came up during the discussion at today’s meeting, too. The SUW website was mentioned as a great example of how to give citizens a way to talk about what’s important to them.

The process isn’t just about a website, so it’s important to mention the charrette that started Tuesday and is happening for the rest of this week.

What’s a charrette? According to SUW, it’s “a way to harness the collective power of a community by gathering everyone with an interest in a set of issues in the same place in a concentrated time period.”

Here’s some commentary on the first day of the charrette from Graham at Progressive Winnipeg, who’s also a member of the newly-formed Speak Up Squad, a kind of “street team” that will be at various public events to hear what you have to say about Winnipeg this summer.

If you get a chance to check out the charrette, it’s going on at the Winnipeg Art Gallery until June 26th.