The South Wallaceburg Action Team is gearing up for a Community Awareness Day on Saturday, November 4.
However, more volunteer leadership is needed to sustain the group in the community.
“Right now there is has been a few people come and go and there has been some changes in leadership… so right now, there is not enough people to sustain an organization,” Marjorie Crew, a former Chatham-Kent councillor and a coordinator with the Chatham-Kent Police Service Community Mobilization group, told the Sydenham Current.
“For it to be sustainable for a neighbourhood and for a community, you need to have citizen leadership and right now there is more service providers at the table. We are there to support, not drive it.”
Crew said the event on November 4 is featuring free food, a child fingerprint identification clinic, PAW Patrol, plus representatives from the Chatham-Kent Fire Department and Chatham-Kent Police Service.
“This is all about building awareness around safety and community initiative,” Crew said.
“They are working on a child fingerprint identification clinic, obviously to help parents who want to be proactive. If your kids go missing, this is just one tool that you can hand over to a police officer. In most cases your finger prints remain the same until you are an adult.”
Crew added: “We are going to have some food and it is all about raising awareness and providing information to the citizens of Wallaceburg. In this case the south Wallaceburg, but I don’t think they discriminate. It is a little bit of everything, but it is also about helping to get people engaged and build this association.”
Crew said the Wallaceburg community always steps up when a specific issue arises.
“It was really cool to see Wallaceburg come out about the four way stop and rally behind things,” she said.
“They are really good at that when they have a particular issue but you know this is something that they can use this group as a formal forum to speak out on issues that are important to them. Whether it is building up their community, doing safety blitzes, having a neighbourhood get together.”
Background
Crew and the Chatham-Kent Police Service Community Mobilization group helped get the South Wallaceburg Action Team off the ground last year.
Back in January, Const. Lynette Hodder, a coordinator with the mobilization group, said the Wallaceburg Community Mobilization Committee, which was made up of a number of agencies, was started a couple years ago.
“To address some of the issues that were occurring at West Court and South Court,” she said. “Since those issues have been addressed, we decided to go on to a new focus.”
Hodder said some research was completed, and it was found that the southside of Wallaceburg was receiving a lot of police calls.
“Not all criminal, so a lot of social disorder calls,” she said.
“We had already started a group in Chatham central. It was blossoming there, things have taken off, so we thought maybe Wallaceburg could use a little ‘TLC’ in the south Wallaceburg area, much like Chatham central. So we thought ‘hey lets give it a shot’.”
Hodder said at the time a couple of meetings had been held and there appeared to be interest in the community to have a group, and hence the South Wallaceburg Action Team was formed.
Const. Deb Lefreniere, another coordinator with the mobilization group, said the the goal is to make Chatham-Kent the safest community for all its residents.
“What we are doing is trying to get everyone involved to see how they want to improve their community,” she said.
“Whether it’s through making a community garden together, improving walk ways, improving lighting in areas of high crime. We just want to get everyone together just to get their opinion and to form a group. Together we can solve a lot of issues.”
Lefreniere said the community mobilization section is still new.
“We are working with community partners and community members to work together to do proactive policing to resolve issues in the community proactively,” she said.
“Part of our umbrella is to work on this project. Just like Marjorie did with East Side Pride, it is the same thing. It is proving the signs of crime are lowered because criminals don’t like to set up camp where communities are working together. They don’t want to be in view.”
Some issues brought up by those in attendance the first meeting held by the mobilization group, included:
– Drugs in the neighbourhood
– Problem houses
– Landlords living outside the community
– Lack of development of a trail along the Sydenham River
– Garbage build-up along the river
– Underdeveloped space
– Negative reputation and perception
Crew said last October in her experience, when associations are formed in neighbourhoods, positive things start happening.
“When people get together and people start talking to each other and getting to know each other, good things happen,” she said.
“People like that feeling of safety and well-being and associations are sustainable and they are a positive way to get things done in the community. Neighbourhood Watches are great, but it is really hard sometimes, especially if there is a feeling of being threatened, that if I put that sticker up in my window now I’m a rat.”
Here is the poster for the upcoming community event for the group:
– Photo credit: Dana Haggith
