Community Beautification Project Fall Workshop

AVI clients and staff held a workshop in September with an attendance of fourteen clients. We filled cedar boxes with dirt, spring bulbs and winter pansies. Everyone had a lot of fun. If you're interested in purchasing one of the flower boxes, contact Kealey or Kristen at AVI.

The Project

AIDS Vancouver Island (AVI) has a vision for our neighbourhood and for our clients. We envision all our neighbours, including businesses, property owners, and non-profits, working together towards a more beautiful neighbourhood. A neighbourhood in which we all take pride.

Our Community Beautification Project involves beautifying our neighbourhood with flowers, in cedar boxes and hanging baskets. The area for the first stage of the project includes a beautification of Amelia and Cormorant Streets.

Our clients are involved in the filling, watering and maintenance of the flower boxes and baskets in our agency's back lot. In the future, clients will be involved in the construction of the boxes.

Clients can be hired to maintain, through watering and pruning, the flowers through the summer months. Clients can also do re-planting twice a year, in the spring and the fall.

In other communities, with similar projects, community attitudes and behaviours change as people start to take ownership and pride in their neighbourhood. One of the positive aspects of this is peer policing in which peers are directly involved in the prevention of damage to the area.

Another important aspect of this project is the personal benefit to our clients. The Community Beautification Project provides a unique service by employing people who are marginalized. The majority live with unstable housing and in poverty. They face multiple barriers in their lives on a daily basis. This honourarium-based "employment” adds stability to their lives.

Even with all these barriers, people come forward to be volunteers. In our off-site syringe pickup program, volunteers experience positive rewards in their lives, including receiving positive comments from the public. We want to duplicate this experience for our clients with the Community Beautification Project.

This project will provide an opportunity for change. With the added self-esteem and confidence of being involved in this project, our clients may change their perception about themselves and envision possibilities for change in their lives. This will, in turn, change our neighbourhood and our relationship with our neighbours, for the better.

AIDS Vancouver Island gratefully acknowledges

support for this program from the:

Special Project Grant