Large crowd gathers to hear about new Vital Signs research on community well-being

A capacity crowd at Kindred Coffee Bar in downtown Lindsay was on hand last night to hear about the new research on our community’s well-being.

Spearheaded by the Kawartha Community Foundation and Kawartha Works Community Co-operative, the new Vital Signs document is essentially a community report card gauging the health of our community. The event was sponsored by The Lindsay Advocate and Kindred, co-moderated by Advocate Publisher Roderick Benns and Kindred Owner Dara Bergeron.

Laurie Dillon-Schalk, outgoing executive director of Kawartha Community Foundation, and Jim Armstrong, chair of the Kawartha Works Community Co-op, reviewed the 11 different indicators in the report that shape the quality of life for residents in the city. This includes healthcare, public safety and arts and culture.

More than 80 communities across Canada have started to use Vital Signs as a way to measure well-being in their communities.

Our growing population was one aspect of the report, with the number of seniors, immigrants and newcomers continuing to grow. “Our population has grown 9,000 people in the last 10 years, after a decade of almost no growth,” said Dillon-Schalk.

Notably, over the last two years there have been more immigrants than Kawartha Lakes has seen over the last 20 years. While 20 years ago there were not any settlement services, the New Canadian Centre in Peterborough and Kawartha Lakes & Haliburton Integrated Immigrant Services Association are beginning to fill that void.

“The beauty of vital signs is it combines quantitative data, that’s largely census data, with vital conversations,” said Dillon-Schalk. She admitted that not every question is answered in Vital Signs, and that the goal will be trying to answer those questions in the next report.

Dillon-Schalk also raised the point that during COVID, a lot of services either shut down or moved to Peterborough, such as the Alzheimer’s Society. (However, the organization still offers supports in Kawartha Lakes.)

When it came to food insecurity, Armstrong pointed out that 20 per cent of Kawartha Lakes’ population is in an insecure food situation. “It’s impressive how many food banks there are in Kawartha Lakes. We shouldn’t need any, but from working with Kawartha Food Source, there are a lot of things identified in the report that we can be doing to help respond to the situation.”

Ashley Anderson, interim executive director of Kawartha Lakes Food Source said she hopes the report will allow the city to be able to see more clearly where changes need to be made. “A lot of municipalities in Canada have been claiming food insecurity as a state of emergency, but nothing has changed in all these cities.”

She’s looking forward to the conversations the report will spark around issues like food security and housing.

The evening also saw a glimpse into the state of education attainment in Kawartha Lakes. Armstrong said that students are keeping up with their peers from across the province, something that is reflected in EQAO test scores in the area. However, there are still high rates of absenteeism and survey results that show students are struggling with their mental health.

Dr. Tashi Rabgey was excited to learn of the information the report had compiled. She came to the event without much knowledge of what the report was but was amazed at the number of topics covered.

“It feels like an experimental moment in the community of how we can really level up in terms of (learning) how we get better at everything. I think the answer is this kind of meeting, this kind of forum where people actually communicate” to get the ball rolling, she said.

Rabgey is hopeful that the evening was the start of more conversations happening between different organizations and community members to help make Kawartha Lakes the best it can be.

For more information on Vital Signs, or to read the full report go to kawarthafoundation.ca/vitalsigns.