THUNDER BAY – The safety and well-being of people in Thunder Bay was the focus of a two – day community forum held this weekend to find ways to make Thunder Bay safer.
100 Community partners and service providers from different sectors gathered at the Prince Arthur Hotel on Saturday to determine the best ways to work together to improve the safety and well-being of those in the community.
Lee-Ann Chevrette, community safety and well-being specialist, says the group focused on the seven priority areas of the CSWB plan, which includes topics such as anti-racism and discrimination, housing and homelessness and community violence.
“We have some very pressing social and safety and well-being issues in our community and so this is the best way to bring people together,” she said.
“The diversity of thought and expertise and context, I think, is really important so we've also included a number of people, quite a large number of people with lived experience and those voices are really critical to this conversation.”
A number of keynote speakers, discussion panels and presentations were showcased at the event and featured voices and ideas from a number of individuals in the community with varying backgrounds, this allowed the form to present different points of views about issues in the community.
Panelist, Jase Watford, says these are important conversations to have.
“As a person who has lived homeless and then is no longer homeless and then I'm working towards getting rid of homelessness that's just one portion of of the social determinants of health,” he said.
“But it's important for me to be able to talk and it's nice to be able to have such a receptive audience listen.”
While the first day of the forum focused on community partners and service providers, day two focused on the public and saw dozens of Thunder Bay residents come out to voice their opinions on keeping the community safe.
McKenzie Mallen who recently moved to Thunder Bay and is currently enrolled in the Masters program in the school of social work at Lakehead University, says that she attended the forum to listen and to learn and what she’s heard most often from other community members is the need to improve Thunder Bay City Transit.
“Transit is huge, that's what my table was talking about and I really think that it's a human right,” she said. “If we could have free transit for the Community, especially for people who are living in poverty in our community who are disadvantaged by systems in our community, if we could allow them to just get around the city it could change peoples lives.”
