Thanks so much, and it is nice to see you as well.
The important piece that I have learned over the 20 years of building this is that it's partnerships. It's the neighbours, and it's hearing from the community.
We had this incredible gift of artists living in the neighbourhood, because it was affordable and we could buy our homes. We then began to connect with each other, so it was very grassroots.
We started looking at partnerships, with safety as one of the biggest pieces. There was no way I would have gone out on 118 Avenue with the amount of violence there, as you mentioned. The community centre was closed because of gun violence. When we began, we met with the Edmonton Police Service and different agencies and groups, asking what we could do together. It was basically taking off all the hats and just being human, sitting around the table and trying to build, not having any one priority stronger than another and just saying that this community needed help.
Kerry, the volunteerism piece—the number of volunteers who came out—was incredible. We talked here about venues and music venues. The Carrot coffee house was volunteer-powered, without a single staff person for seven years. It was all volunteer-powered. Everyone behind the barista bar, everyone running sound and everyone running lights was a volunteer. It was the incredible gifting of people coming together to build, and the safety component remains.
As I was saying, we're social workers. We're working with opioid addicts on the avenue, working on how to change people from residents to citizens and how to make that stretch. There are veterans who are incredibly impoverished, and we work together with them.
It's creating community and stakeholders, giving voice to the table and continuing that through the decades. We still have committees that are meeting and formed.