Originally published in the Bird’s Eye
You know your girl loves a potluck, and every once in a while, this job of mine takes me somewhere delicious, sunny, and full of people I’m delighted to sit beside. Last week’s hard work landed me in a backyard on the Quadra Loop, plate in hand, surrounded by about 45 neighbours for their own Neighbourhood Emergency Preparedness Program (NEPP) gathering — a tradition this particular hood holds every year, and proof, if any was needed, that reporting on Quadra sometimes means eating well in good company. The reason I’d been invited was to witness the first neighbourhood on Quadra begin
rolling out the Compassionate Neighbourhoods program alongside its existing NEPP network.
It felt like a quintessential summer picnic, the kind I’m even more grateful for postCOVID. There were bingo cards floating around, the whole object of the game being to talk to your neighbours and ask them questions. I got to see some of my dearest islanders and share belly laughs, met new folks and fell into lively conversation, and — as though it were my own personal heaven — was magically handed shucked oyster after shucked oyster. Honestly? 10/10, would emergency with this group.
It’s no secret that new things can take a minute to find their footing on our island, and that’s not a bad thing — it just means people care. NEPP is the elder in the room, and Compassionate Neighbourhoods is still the new kid on the block — but the more you look at what each one actually does, they feel less like rivals and more like cousins: related, each with their own job to do, and honestly, a lot more fun when they’re both at the same potluck.
Judy Hagan, Quadra’s NEPP Liaison Officer, echoed that sentiment. “We’ve had many meetings with them, and they’re like a tool in the neighbourhood program toolkit,” she said of the program. “We’ve [NEPP] made lists of where there are registered nurses and doctors. We know where there are carpenters throughout our neighbourhood, but to have someone who knows the people of the neighbourhood and is helping all the time, that’s marvellous.”
Compassionate Neighbourhoods is the newest in a long line of programs Quadra Circle has brought to Quadra — and it comes with real credentials behind it. We are one of only four rural communities in British Columbia chosen to take part in a study led by UBC’s School of Nursing, in partnership with the BC Centre for Palliative Care. This isn’t some willy-nilly volunteer effort: “Neighbourhood Connectors” go through background checks and sign a confidentiality agreement before
they ever knock on a door.
What they actually do is refreshingly ordinary. As Program Coordinator Kathleen Monahan put it at the potluck, “if you’ve got a tree that’s down, they’ll find somebody that’s going to come cut it up for you.” It might be a one-off ask — a ride to an appointment, a hand with yard work, someone to walk the dog for a neighbour who no longer can. Or it might be something that needs to keep going, in which case a Connector can help you access the wider web of resources already here on the island or online. An island-wide survey conducted last winter found the biggest barrier to asking for help wasn’t a lack of services — it was people not wanting to feel like a burden. Compassionate Neighbourhoods aims to make asking easier, whatever the need looks like.
After the potluck wound down, Judy and I found ourselves walking out of the yard at the same time. As we were chatting about the two programs, she reached into her purse and pulled out a copy of the Quadra Island Neighbourhood Emergency Preparedness Program Guide — because, of course, she had it on her. With that wry smile of hers, she flipped to page two and pointed at a quote printed right there: “We do better when we do things together!” — Judy Hagan, QI Liaison Officer.
Ain’t that just the truth.
Top image credit: L-R: Sheelagh Elmitt, Kathleen Monahan, Shelby Sims,
Bill Sims, Judy Hagan, and Maureen McDowell – courtesy Melissa McKinney