Community Wednesdays are back for another year and we are excited to announce the schedule for the upcoming season, here are the dates (4:00-7:00 PM), locations and themes for the five events coming up.
Nov. 4th – St. Willibrord School – “Living together”
Dec. 2nd – Mary Gardner School (with école Marc-André-Fortier) – “Christmas Time”
Feb. 3rd – école Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption – “Health living, nutrition”
Apr. 6th – école Sainte-Martine – “My budget, my rent”
May 4th – école Gérin-Lajoie – “Quebec family week”
Once again it is a bilingual event, with over twenty local community and governmental organizations, free babysitting for children under 7-years old and the spaghetti dinner for $2.
In its 7th year (started Fall 2009), Community Wednesdays has grown to inspire other regions in the Montérégie to create their own community nights, such as: “Soiree Communau-T” (Haut-St-Laurent – Chateauguay Valley), “les 5@7 Communautaires” (Valleyfield) and “Au Coeur de la Communauté” (Jardins-de-Napierville).
We’d also like to take this moment to share a few highlights from last year and thank the numerous community partners involved in this project. We held six community evenings at 5 different schools during 2014-15:
- We served over 1007 spaghetti dinners. That’s right over a 1000! For the first time in Community Wednesdays history. (In brackets # of approximate meals served per evening)
– Octobre 1st @ St. Willibrord (150) – November 5th @ Centennial Park (95)
– Decembre 3rd @ Mary Gardner (240) – February 4th @ Gérin-Lajoie (161)
– April 1st @ De la Rive (183) – May 6th @ St-Willibrord (178)
We know our total number of visitors per evening is higher (anywhere from 25 to 100 per night), as not everyone eats the spaghetti. But a rough idea of meals helps us establish rough idea of visitors per evening.
- We also had 72 children take advantage of the child care services offered by La Station De L’Aventure.
- We had an average of 25 community groups and/or public partners in attendance every Wednesday.
- Each Wednesday we had special events: reading with children workshops, bibliobus, Fire trucks from the Chateauguay Fire House, Zumba dancing, student choirs, Santa Claus, face-painting, children’s clothing donated by the Rencontre Châteauguoise, baby-seat installation and verification by the Police Department, Healthy lunch box examples, yoga for children and adults, making a budget workshops, learning how to use tam-tams… just to name a few.
List of organizations that took part: 42 organizations took part at some point during one of our Wednesdays.
ACEF Rive-Sud, AL-ANON / AL-ATEEN, Association de soccer Châteauguay, Association des russophones, AVIF, Badminton, Benado, CALACS Châteauguay, Centre communautaire Châteauguay, Centre l’ACCORE, CEPA Bouquinerie, Chateauguay English Community Network, Civitan, CJE Châteauguay, Coccinelles, Comité logement Rive-Sud, Comité pour la politique culturelle, New Frontiers School Board, CSSS –santé publique, École Gérin-Lajoie-livre de recettes, ESPACE, Fermières St-Joachim, FROHM, Héritage St-Bernard, Impôts bénévoles suroît, La Re-Source, La Station de l’Aventure, Le Jalon, Les toits d’Émile, Liberté de choisir, LRC, Maison Le Pailleur, Maison sous les arbres, Mouvement Action Découverte, Police de Châteauguay, PPO St-Willibrord, Raiders Football Châteauguay Association, Re-Nou-Vie, Restauratives practices, RIAPAS, Service d’incendies de la Ville de Châteauguay, Ville de Châteauguay – Centre nautique, Ville de Châteauguay – informations générales
Some past media video accounts of Community Wednesdays: