Community Development in Action - Meet Michael!
CDLI is spotlighting Community Development in Action! Meet Michael!
CDLI has partnered with the City of Calgary Community Hubs Initiative to capture Community Development in Action. We recently spoke with community members about their experiences leading community projects through neighbourhood and community grants.
Michael is a community builder and an avid chess player who lives in Downtown Calgary. Through community grants, he started up the Baker House Chess Club at his building, as well as a year-round community garden, to make connection and engage residents and community members. He also sits on the Neighbourhood Grants Advisory Council.
We asked Michael a few questions about community building and here’s what he shared:
What do you love about Downtown that you want the rest of Calgary to know about?
The ideal thing about living downtown is being right in the center core of Calgary. Everything is close and all your needs can be filled within three blocks. So it's convenient, and for anybody who is challenged in any way, it makes it quite accessible to them.
Tell us a bit about yourself, your project, and what made you apply for the Hubs Activate grant?
When I when I first became disabled and moved into Baker House, I found that everybody was extremely reclusive. We have 250 residents in this building and for the first year, I may have met seven. I'm an extrovert, I just love being around people, and I wasn't happy. So I came to Claire, who was the tenant liaison and I said, this is something that we can do here, we can get some people together. I came up with the idea of a chess club because I played chess for the last 40 years. A lot of people would come and play or watch, people who’d come and learn. Sometimes we'd have two people playing and 10 people talking. It planted the seeds and when the grants came along, I applied immediately and then I was invited to sit on the Neighbourhood Grants Advisory Council. I really enjoyed that and from there, we had ideas for the community garden for this summer, and then the winter garden for this winter coming up.
How do you put your community building ideas into practice?
I needed to find a stepping stone, or what my goals and aspirations were, because I went from being very community-involved to disabled and completely isolated and I had to find a way back to being community-involved again. It was very simple, I did not want to be in my apartment twiddling my thumbs. I needed to have that interaction, but from that, I have started playing competitive chess again, which is very stressful but it's a lot of fun too. I started volunteering with the Calgary Chess Club and now I sit on their Board of Directors, as their secretary and that helps me because I meet more people in social settings that I can make aware of the community efforts that we're making here now. The word gets spread to people who can actually influence and make changes, so that, for me, has been one of my accomplishments - being able to make that step.
What relationships/connections did you make through this project, and how did those connections help the project?
The connections that I've been able to make through these projects where, for example, you, you have the community projects with the City of Calgary and Calgary Housing and I now have connections within the command structure above who just works in the building, you know, managers and supervisors and things with the City.
“All the people that I involve myself with, other volunteers and leaders in the community, have been a great resource to give me that confidence.”
How has being involved in community work through projects like yours helped develop your confidence and leadership skills? What knowledge & skills have you and others developed through this project?
I spent 40 years in the Merchant Marines and I was first mate, which was second in command, so I’ve always had the ability to lead. I have not always had the courage to lead but I've always had the ability to and for my circumstance now, I just needed the right triggers to build the confidence to lead. What's really interesting, and I'm very humble with this, is that when I ventured into grants and community projects, I found that I could learn a lot from managers, supervisors, social workers...Joy Norstrom, the Community Social Worker, is my mentor. And although my specialty may be in big ships, I’m quite a novice when it comes to human interaction and I've had to adjust the way I present myself and things like this. All the people that I involve myself with, other volunteers and leaders in the volunteer community, have been a great resource to give me that confidence.
On a serious note, there's very rigorous protocol to follow when you're dealing with the public, and that was probably the biggest learning curve I had to go through - learning the policies and the principles that you have to follow in order not to offend. So it was interesting because, for me, as a sailor, you can only imagine, I have rough edges but Joy Norstrom smoothed those rough edges.
In one word, what do you imagine for the future of your community?
Impossible...Because “I’m Possible”. Nothing is Impossible because I’m Possible.
