Community Building Gathering V - "Moving Forward and Upward Together"
December 1 & 2, 2000

What Happened:
The Community Building Gathering V has finally happened, and with great success. Community members from all around Edmonton joined together at the Saxony Hotel to talk about Land Use that promotes community spirit, and Creative Funding Ideas. Click here to see community builders at work!

Day 1
This day started with some great RAFF activities to help the participants get to know one anouther and build relationships. This also helped to get the creative juices flowing! The participants came up with some great cheers, songs, and poems to get into the RAFF spirit - click here to read some!

Later Karl Kehde, a collaborative land planner from Vermont, shared with us his process of Smart Land Development Model. Once everyone felt comfortable with the process the various communities split into groups, using this process, to rediscover their communities with the use of aerial maps. Many of the groups were surprised with what they found out about their communities. For information on the Smart Land Development Model check out this website. www.landuse.org.

Day 2
This day started with everyone getting into groups with one guest speaker at each table. These participants's were asked two questions:

• What are ways an organization can survive and thrive financially and have fun doing it?
• Who can make it happen?

The groups came up with some great ideas. They also had the time to ask the panel of guest speakers, Rosemary Tremblay, Howard Sapers, Dave Stewart, and Cal Nichols, some questions about sustainability.

Participants were asked to bring something from their community or that symbolized something in their community to be used as door prizes. Everyone enjoyed receiving the great gifts from each others community. Day two ended with people sharing something great that happened in their community. These were heartfelt stories and were truly inspiring to all community builders.

http://www.cbr-aimhigh.com