My first year of university, I went to the Pen Centre to buy some groceries on a Sunday. What should have been a 1-hour trip max, turned into a 3-hour journey. I got to the store quickly, and shopped at the same speed, but waited and waited for the bus, and it never came. I knew buses came less frequently on the weekend, so I waited for an hour. After an hour passed, and there was still no bus, I realized I needed a cab. I tried 3 numbers found on Google, and all were out of business. A free bus ride turned into a $15 cab ride that I really couldn't afford.
Later on in the year, I caught a cold, and I needed a doctor. The clinic at the school was always full, and coming from a small town, I didn't know there were such things as walk-in clinics; I thought the university was the only place that did this. While this may seem naïve to some, this is a story I hear quite often.
Over the years since, I've had issues with housing, jobs, networking, finding community, and much more. I can't tell you how many hours I spent just searching for the right information, the right place to call, the right person to talk to. It shouldn't be this hard to find the right information. People shouldn't have to navigate a 10-year old website to call a number, and it be out of service. People shouldn't have to feel alone when they move to a new city.
I came up with this idea in 2019, and while the website was fine, the biggest issue was that it was too big of a task to do alone. So, like many things, I left it. I took this mindset with many problems in my life pertaining to community until my Social Justice class in 2022. In the class, I learned that we all come from different walks of life, and have the ability to share knowledge with one another, and in one way or another we are all connected. I recognize that I don't know everything. I have lived here since 2014 and there's still so much to learn. What I now realize is though is that the connections we build can contribute to community knowledge. The best part about knowledge is it's free to share! So stay a while, learn something, or share something. We all have the key to knowledge here, and all voices are equally important.
**It is important to note that I am not affiliated with any group, I am not sponsored nor do I wish to profit off of this page. The goal is to create a growing platform of community information by the community for the community**