Sustainable development will be the focus of a community meeting being hosted by the BC Council for International Cooperation (BCCIC) at Thompson Rivers University Williams Lake campus Wednesday, Nov. 2.
“This is basically a follow up meeting to a tour that we had last spring,” said BCCIC communications officer Kareen Wong.
“Our executive director and our program officer met with people in Williams Lake who are part of an organization or a business in the community working on sustainable development.”
So far the representatives from the Potato House Society, Northern Shuswap Tribal Council joint resources committee, Williams Lake Downtown Business Improvement Association, Education Council of Canadians, Rivershed Society of B.C., Fraser Basin Council and the Cariboo-Chilcotin Beetle Action Coalition Society have signed up to attend, Wong said.
The intent of the meetings — which are being held in other communities after Williams Lake — is to bring people together to discuss how their work interlinks with each other with the new United Nations sustainable development goals or how the goals present an opportunity for political engagement with the upcoming provincial election in May 2017, she added.
At this meeting, the group will present key findings from its roundtable meetings held over the past year and explore the idea of a non-partisan political campaign to generate support for the sustainable development goals and the groups working on them across B.C., and discuss the possibility of holding a non-partisan all-candidates meeting in Williams Lake.
“With the rest of the world as well as other provinces really pushing progress on the Sustainable Development Goals, British Columbia really has a lot of potential to rise to the challenge and make sure we are doing our fair share of this work”, says Dan Harris, BCCIC Program Officer.
Wednesday’s meeting takes place from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. and people wishing to attend are asked to RSVP by e-mailing dan@bccic.ca.