London Community Foundation
I’ve just spent the past two days in London, ON meeting with many of our Timeraiser partners. Most are located in downtown London.
The conversations have been great. More on that in a moment. What struck me as really exciting is the downtown’s revitalization, led by the transformation of Galleria Mall, now called the Citi Plaza Centre.
Originally built like so many mega-malls for downtown centres, the Galleria Mall tenants slowly vacated the building as London quickly fell victim to suburbanization. For many years, the Galleria Mall stood mainly empty.
Then civic leaders began to revision how that space could serve London. The London Library moved in to where the HBC used to be. Fanshawe College and The University of Western Ontario’s Continuing Studies opened satellite offices. The YMCA offers its popular LINC program offers free daily English classes for new comers to Canada.
London Pillar Network
Pillar Nonprofit and London Arts Council are within and adjacent to, respectively, the Public Library.
In the Library, the Government of Ontario has a job search centre. Nearly all the computers were filled as users sifted through recent postings.
London Public Library
The Little Red Roster Coffee, adjacent to the Library and across from the London Arts Council, was buzzing with people.
Only a few blocks away, the London Community Foundation office is located on the second floor of the Market. Roxanne of the LCF and I had a great chat about the Engage program and Vital Signs.
My final meeting of the trip was with the event planning team of the London Timeraiser. We did our final site tours of two venues so we can firm up details for the Timeraiser. One of the team members of the event planning committee is Jason Hastings from United Way of London and Middlesex. Jason and I had a great chat about civic engagement in the Maple City. Jason also works with the new initiative, GenNext. After their launch event last year, the volunteer group has taken on Timeraiser as a project. It’s exciting to see so many 20-30 somethings collaborating to give back to the community and become the next generation of community leaders.
While London is undergoing significant economic woes, its civic leaders and NGO community are really doing some impressive stuff.
Thanks for having us London.
