We held our third and final design gathering on Friday February 8th. Where previous design gatherings asked for input from residents and allied organizations, our third gathering invited stakeholders and community organizations to engage with us in conversation about potential channels of collaboration as well as give us feedback on our work thus far. Representatives from various community organizations attended as well as our city councillor, Kristyn Wong-Tam, and representative from our MPP and MP’s offices.

The design gathering started off with presentations from Josephine on the history of the projects and our Project Co-Coordinators, Yi Fan and Darryl, on how the feasibility study is progressing. Our technical consultants, Waterfarmers, also presented an overview of their findings for the technical study and we also have time for some questions and answers. After a short break, Councillor Wong-Tam gave a very inspirational speech on how the strengths and weaknesses of the community as well as pledged her full support of the project which we were really excited to hear.

The final part of the design gathering culminated in a group conversation on other channels of funding, support, and collaboration that participants suggested. Overall, we were glad that so many people came out on a cold and icy Friday to both hear about the project but also to support the co-op in realizing the dream of a food secure community.

In the upcoming months, we’ll be gathering the information from all three design gatherings to present at our AGM in March before writing everything up for our feasibility study. We’re really excited to continue this work and can’t wait to share with you the results of our feasibility study!

Check out other photos of the event here