Community Engagement Toward Sustainability in Williams Lake

Williams Lake is a resource-based community with a population of 10,000, located in the heart of British Columbia. In the fall of 2008 the town received a federal grant to create an Integrated Community Sustainability Plan. In the end, The Natural Step in partnership with Whistler’s Sustainability Center and Smart Growth B.C., impressed the City’s Council with their proposal that highlighted both the science and rigor behind the method of their approach and the dynamic, community-focused, mode by which the process would unfold.

With the support of Council, the integrated staff planning team set off into the community to capture what the towns citizens envisioned a healthy, vibrant, Williams Lake to look like 25 years down the road. To uncover this information the team engaged with community members in a wide range of events, including the annual “Performance in the Park” concert series, a WorldCafé style “Community Partners Cafe”, facilitated “hotspot” sessions held around the city, “youth workshops”, and “kitchen table” sessions where neighbours congregated into one home to discuss what they deemed to be the most important sustainability issues for Williams Lake.

Incredible feedback was communicated to the team which allowed them to create a synthesized community input guide for community partners. “Williams Lake is looking to take ownership of their shared future” shared TNS advisor Pong Leung, which is fitting for their so aptly named sustainability approach “Williams Lake: Imagine our Future”.  In November, 2009, only a year after initiating a sustainability movement, Williams Lake is proud to announce the signing of a Sustainability Declaration where a continued commitment to strive to follow the “Principles of Sustainability” and “Principles of Smart Growth” is acknowledged. 

Council, the integrated staff planning team, and the community at large are now actively positioning the community to become aligned with the vision they have laid out for themselves. At the end of November a Café session was held called “Transitioning our City” which focused on the question “how”- how can we make this happen?   In the new year, the community will transition from planning to implementation with a number of initiatives, include translating the Imagine Our Future outcomes into their Official Community Plan, and exploring how community partners can take a leadership role in action planning. 

Take a look at some of the images captured by TNS advisor Pong Leung