Saturday, December 6, 2014

Opportunities for the Hamilton Faith Community

Looking into the New Year, we will be working on a couple initiatives and would love to have members of faith communities get involved. These include:

Expanding the Greenbelt to include Urban River Valleys.

The Hamilton faith community is being invited by Environment Hamilton to participate in their campaign to expand the greenbelt in Hamilton, along the urban river valleys (thanks to the province’s new urban river valley designation).
The Ontario Greenbelt Alliance recommends that the municipalities of Toronto, Mississauga, Brampton, Oakville, Markham, Guelph and Hamilton use the Province’s designation as a further layer of protection for green spaces. Over five million more Ontarians would be directly connected to the Greenbelt if the Greenbelt grew along some of the province’s best-known rivers and creeks. Faith groups could play a significant role in both the symbolic message (Celebrating our valleys) as well as promoting congregations engagement and health too (we plan to do hikes and clean ups with many other groups).



Pollinator Paradise Project.

Here, we are interested in getting more communities and individuals involved in creating habitat for monarch butterflies and other pollinators by planting corridors of milkweed and wildflowers in our public parks and around our homes and faith groups.







FCG’s Solar Revitalization for Faith Communities Project is funded by Ontario Power Authority. We will be encouraging faith communities across Ontario to share their solar stories and encourage others to go solar as well. Hamilton will be part of this initiative of course.



Municipal Level of Engagement

City of Hamilton, Climate Change Community Action Plan invited GSS (with Environment Hamilton) to be part of the steering committee in April because they understand the significance of having faith communities at the table for this ongoing planning.