Voluntary Planning

Just a brief note to say the meetings continue to be going very well. I was up in Cape Breton again last night. We had an intimate and successful meeting in St. Peter's. The size of the different meetings continues to vary. We've had single-digit attendence up to well into triple-digit territory. Each meeting certainly has it's own character.

We managed to get a few more submissions on the website. We've been a little slow to post submissions as most Voluntary Planning staff have been on the road every week at meetings so there's simply nobody in the office to get it done. You can see submission under the Get Involved page in the Natural Resources Project section of our website. Or, click here to go straight there!

edit: Just realised we still don't have the "submitted by" footer on blog posts to indicate who wrote a given post. That makes the use of the word "I" rather confusing...but "I" is Dan O'Rourke. Pleased to be at your service. Also quite pleased to introduce myself with the sentence: "I is Dan O'Rourke."

We're well into the community meetings around the province.  The meetings have all been quite different, and we've been getting tremendous participation and some great content.   Meeting sizes have ranged in size from 22 people to 242 people. 

With many meetings left to go, if you haven't had the chance to check one out, don't miss your opportunity! 

Last night was the first of 26 community meetings. The meeting was held in Pugwash, Nova Scotia. We weren't really sure what kind of numbers to expect. That's a hazard of doing a completely open public meeting. Given the size of Pugwash, we took a guess and set the room up for 30 people.
You can just imagine how thrilled we were when a crowd of 62 showed up! We quickly got out some more chairs and had a terrific meeting. We got so many fantastic comments last night. And the discussion between participants was excellent. I'm very much looking forward to tonights meetings. There's three happening across the province and I (Dan O'Rourke) am already in Port Hawkesbury to set up for the one happening here at the Civic Center.
No doubt we're in for another great night!

---posted from mobile---

In the past Voluntary Planning hasn't made public any of the submissions it recieves during a citizen engagement project.  From early on we wanted the Natura Resources Project to be different.  We wanted to share as many submissions with the public as we could.

With that in mind, later today we'll be sharing the first few written submissions we've received.  We're still working out the kinks on how to best share and organize these things, but we think it's a step forward in our efforts to be as transparent as possible.  

 You'll be able to get to the submissions by visiting the "Get Involved" page of the Natural Resources Project.

Today is the first of 26 community meetings on the topic of Natural Resources. We're all packed up and ready to go. This first meeting is happening in Pugwash, Nova Scotia. I'll be there along with a couple of our committee members and VP staff. It's exciting to be hitting the road!

Our boxes of supplies are packed and we're very much looking forward to giving Nova Scotians the chance to share their thoughts and values on our provinces natural resources. I hope to see you there!