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Community Connections
I spend way too much of my life in meetings. One of the things I hear over and over and from many different people is the need for a centralized place to coordinate all the millions of things going on in Whistler. The library schedules an event in the middle of the Ski & Snowboard Festival and nobody comes. You can’t attend a workshop because it conflicts with your child’s hockey tournament. Every so often, somebody says “Why can’t we have a community calendar with everything on it?”
A new website has been created that can fill this function in Whistler, and throughout the Sea to Sky region. Originally developed by the Corridor Volunteer Project of the BC Healthy Living Alliance, it’s called the Corridor Connector and can be found at www.corridorconnector.org.
One of the hardest things for community organizations to do is to get the word out about their activities and events, especially with tight advertising budgets. This project, and the website, has the potential to become an incredibly rich resource for community events – a one-stop shop for activities in Whistler and beyond.
If you are involved in a non-profit or community group that depends on volunteers, this is also the place for you. Volunteer opportunities are listed on the site, making it easy for potential volunteers to see what jobs are available to them. Besides the Community Calendar and the Volunteer Opportunities sections, there is also a Community Directory for organizations and a list of Resources for Community Groups. The registration process is fairly simple, and you must register your organization before you can post any events or volunteer opportunities.
With the close of funding for the official Corridor Volunteer Project, the responsibility of promoting and supporting the site in Whistler has been transferred to Whistler Public Library. If you are interested in registering your group and posting events or jobs but need some help, please feel free to contact me at the library: 604.935.8433 or lstara@whistlerlibrary.ca.
I’d like to challenge our community groups to make the Whistler section of the site the most comprehensive and useful resource possible, outshining the other communities in our lovely region. Register your organization and post all your events. Use this calendar as a tool for scheduling future programs – at this writing, Whistler Public Library’s events are the only ones listed, but you can change all that!
Lauren Stara, Library Director