Adonis Huggins is a community journalist with Focus Media Arts Centre

The April 20th 2023 meeting of the SDP Planning Committee, was chaired by Wallied Khogali. The first item on the agenda was about the evaluation of the Social Development Plan. Members listened to a presentation from Kaitlyn Ferreira and Ismail Mohammed, from the Evaluation and Benchmark Committee, on the evaluation cycle and the planned activities.

As part of the presentation, Kaitlyn Ferreira and Ismail Mohammed talked about the purpose of evaluations and how they plan to carry it out this year. Ismail told the group that the evaluation's purpose is to see how well the Planning Committee and all the other working groups of the SDP are performing in regards to the goal of social cohesion and social inclusion, because ultimately this is SDP's overarching goal.

Ismail and Kaitlyn are seeking champions from each of the working groups and committees who can help in the development of surveys and the gathering of hard data needed to objectively evaluate and measure the SDP more accurately. This information will be used to help to determine goals and decisions for the future. In February next year, the evaluations and Benchmark Committee plans to report back to the community with their fundings.

Following the Evaluations and Benchmark Committee report, city staff member Daniela Costello, led the group through items related to the upcoming Progress Report scheduled for May 11th at the Daniels Spectrum Centre. One of the more contentious issues that was discussed was related to the food budget for the event for which Marlene Degenova, a resident member, is responsible. Marleene with support from another resident member, feels that the budget that was allocated ($16/per person) for food from the City’s operating funds is not enough to feed the estimated 100 persons who would be coming. City staff member Richard Kirwan, with support from a resident member, feels strongly that Marleene should work within the budget that she was given. Walied, used his authority as chair, to resolve the issue by suggesting that Marleene should work within the budget but the Planning Committee would review the budget at a future meeting should this prove challenging because of increased numbers. No one raised an objection to this and the meeting continued.

The next item that was presented was from Joel Klassen, the co-chair of the Community Building Working Group. Joel informed everyone that several members of the SDP had enrolled in a course about social justice transformation. The course is organized by the University of Toronto’s School of Cities and the United Way. Joel feels that the course will provide members with insights that can be applied to the SDP.

]The last item was on accessing meeting recordings and members were once again reminded that a draft policy will be presented by the Communications Working Group at a future meeting.