Over 200 people gathered at the Regent Theatre last week for the County Foundation’s presentation of its 2023 Vital Signs Report.

Entitled “Building Bridges of Inclusion,” the report constructs a cohesive, beautifully organized fretwork centred on the human imperative to connect.

Foundation CEO Dominique Jones and Vital Signs Coordinator Ann Van Vlack, along with their many supporters and sponsors, have integrated the concerns of key groups — young people, seniors, those living with disabilities, the racialized, women — into a positive focus on integrating community by building bridges.

While the report is known for its numbers, its “vital signs,” it does more than present statistics. It integrates its data into policy analysis. More than 1 in 4 people in the County live alone, for example. The report connects that statistic to the experience of social isolation, recently recognized as a serious public health issue in the Canadian Social Survey. The human need to connect is crucial to the sense of wellbeing. It must be fostered and sustained in civic culture, planning, and development.

Accordingly, the report stresses both social and civic infrastructure, from kindness and engagement to libraries and town halls. The way we design public spaces, from parks and sidewalks to neighbourhoods, will either help or hinder social interaction and a corresponding sense of belonging — of community.

The report recognizes and reinforces the importance of work that is already well underway. Attention to belonging and inclusion supports youth-oriented initiatives, such as the work of the ROC and the Learning Centre, as well as that of the libraries, Community Care for seniors, and of Alternatives for Women. It also incorporates attention to barrier-free design for the elderly and disabled into that sense of community, of care for others.

Another major stressor these days is the pace of change both nationally and in the County. The extreme changes initiated by the pandemic have increased the sense of isolation in county residents living alone as well as between different social groups. At the same time, a rapid influx of new people is creating a sense of fracture between the old and the new.

Ms. Van Vlack noted that while some things are changing quickly and dramatically, such as the cost of living, other things, like incomes, are staying more or less the same. The result is a sense of dislocation, of things not hanging together, as well as the more obvious food and housing insecurity.

Reverend Aaron Miechkota, the newly ordained minister at Cressy Glenora United Church, spoke eloquently about the personal and social value of integrated spaces. “It is safer, more sustainable, more nourishing to work together to invest in the common good. It results in more people feeling better for longer.”

Ms. Jones concluded by stressing those actions that further both one’s own and the common good: kindness, connecting, embracing diversity, contributing, volunteering.