Thoughts from the Social Equity Pillar Champion
The Social Equity Pillar will help social agencies and residents to raise awareness about social needs and to engage both citizens and community partners to plan and act in response to these needs. The end result will be to improve the well-being of the whole community. Together, we will build social capital in the community between individuals and gorups in order to enable collaborative action on projects of common interest.
Though Social Equity is often hard to quantify, measures which evaluate income, employment, literacy, access to housing and health care among many others, are both available and useful. There are several organizations within Kingston such as the Community Foundation, the Social Planning Council, the United Way and others that produce broad based reports which provide both general and detailed perspectives on social equity in Kingston.
With this, we stress the important of personal and group well-being and security, including full access to effective health care, housing, food, and education services - these being the essential prerequisites for full participation in cultural, environmental, and economic activities.
Sustainable Kingston provides an opportunity to focus on the complex issues of Quality of Life and Quality of Place using the integrated four-pillar framework. Readers and users of this document are encouraged to make continual reference to all four sectors to underscore the synergies that underlie this whole effort.
The themes identified in the Social Equity Pillar are:
Social Pillar: Social Equity
The Social Pillar Champion advising on behalf of the Social Equity Pillar is Ross Cameron. Throughout the development of Sustainable Kingston, Ross has provided updates to the Social Planning Council.
