Committee Corner

The imagineCALGARY Partnership is supported and directed by three Committees, each of which is comprised of members from various Partnership organizations. Updates from the Steering, Collaborative Action and Communications and Awareness committees detailing their recent work and future priorities follow below:

Steering Committee
The Steering Committee had a meeting February 19th to review the draft versions of the 2009 Steering Committee Work Plan and the All Committees Work Book. The Work Book was created to condense the goals and objectives for The Strategy for the imagineCALGARY Partnership, 2009 – 2015 (the “Strategy Plan). It spans all committees’ 2009 activities outlined under the Strategy Plan. A participation call for Steering Committee members was presented for 2009 with a more detailed document outlining participation opportunities to follow.

Collaborative Action
The Collaborative Action Committee (CAC) met in February to begin assembling its work plan for 2009. An ad-hoc committee was struck to organize a Peer Learning event for this spring on the theme of grade 12 graduation and lifelong learning. A second ad-hoc committee will be formed at a later date to organize a Peer Learning event in the autumn on economic well-being.

At the request of the Steering Committee, the CAC will work to identify baselines for each of the Targets in imagineCALGARY’s three key areas of focus: economic well-being, grade 12 graduation and successful work/learning transitions, and environmental sustainability. This work will assist imagineCALGARY with measuring its success going forward.

Communications and Awareness
In February, the Communications and Awareness Committee had its first meeting of 2009. The focus was on ways to continue the important movement that happened in the imagineCALGARY Partnership in 2008 with our growing diversity of communications vehicles.

The Committee had an interesting discussion around Peer Learning events as well. It seems that an unintended consequence of the first two Peer Learning events was that smaller organizations felt somewhat removed from the conversation. At these first two events, larger Partners like The City of Calgary, the Board of Education and The University of Calgary presented their work and this had the effect that some smaller Partners felt the lessons weren't completely applicable. This certainly wasn't intended, but provides great insight into how to potentially structure future imagineCALGARY learning events to bridge possible gaps.

Check out the Coordinators Corner at www.imaginecalgary.ning.com to read more, to chat with the Coordinators or to participate in ongoing discussions.