Surprise Winner of the Community Grant: GHCS's Floors and Taps

Dear Galiano Island,

Don't you just love surprises? This past iteration of the Active Galiano Community Grants Poll has certainly held some surprises for me.

First, I was surprised at how close the final vote was: 17 to 15 in favour of the children's playground equipment for younger kids at the school. Why surprised? Probably because I've been spending time lately helping the GHCS. Having come to know the folks who are doing the heavy lifting when it comes to providing accessible health care on Galiano, I've watched them pave the way to a future that once again includes a locally resident doctor.

In watching the GHCS enable medical services for the island... I figured, no matter how small an item the GHCS was requesting, that the island community would see fit to make sure it was delivered to them, and fast, over all other current needs in the community. And frankly, the closeness of this vote does reflect how high a priority the GHCS is to islanders. Flooring and taps might not be a project with lots of curb appeal, but people do know how important a modernized facility is and showing community support for the GHCS sends a strong message to candidates for the Doctor position.

But I'm not at all surprised that making Galiano an even better place to raise kids is a high priority for us. The turnout for last year's meeting on the possibility of Day Care was huge. And it's easy to see that playground equipment for the very young would be a big win for the school grounds.

But the biggest surprise of all came when our school principal, Sue McKenzie, wrote that she can't really take the money at this point because things have changed behind the scenes. The project of building more playground equipment at the school has been put on the back burner. (I would expect to see that project reapply in the next voting round in the spring.)

And so with that, Sue asked to bow out of this round's competition after having teased out a strong community priority, and have this round of money go to GHCS. I agreed, and decided that for the next round, we'll ask folks who apply a few questions like "What stage is the project at?", "When will the money be spent?", and "What is the overall budget?" It'll have to be a small set of questions because we don't want to force applicants to have to write a novel.

There's no doubt in my mind that the parents of the youngest kids on this island, many of those who voted for the Playground Equipment, would also agree that attracting a full-time doctor to the community is a high priority for the quality of life for kids here on Galiano. But the people have spoken, and those who are interested to know the community's priority can now know that playground equipment for the very youngest kids would help parents and kids both on the school grounds. (When that project comes up again, consider volunteering!)

The Active Galiano Community Grant process is designed to become a low effort / high impact way of finding out the community's priority and then diverting money in that direction by abdicating Ad Revenue on Active Galiano. Watch out for future "value ads" for Active Galiano's advertisers.

Special thanks go to this round's sponsors:

Alison Colwell - For the Blackberry Patch B&B
Alison Colwell - For Alison's Cake Shop
Martine Paulin - Caterings by Martine
Galiano Coffee Roasting Company
Larry W Foden -
Conny and Mel - Galiano Inn
Marjorie Blackwood -
Jesse Keefer - Bodega Ridge

I'll contact them individually with information on how to submit their money so that we can turn their new ads on. Watch for those ads appearing on Active Galiano soon!

Oh... and by the way.... any organization that donates $75 to the GHCS on behalf of Active Galiano between now and May 1st will have their Directory Entry on Active Galiano promoted to Ad Status until May 1st, 2012. Spread the word! The sooner they pledge, the longer their ad will appear highlighted on our site.

cheers!

Christian