Author: Todd Turnbull

The 2020 Annual Festival Of Neighbourhoods Celebration is coming!

Sunday, November 15th, beginning at 1:00pm

Festival Of Neighbourhoods invites you to share your ideas for a 2020 Celebration happening on Sunday, November 15th that will engage your neighbourhood both on and offline.

Send us your thoughts on how you’d like to participate! You can fill out the online RSVP form at or email allison.brown@waterlooregion.org with your ideas.

The celebration will recognize all the amazing ways you and your neighbours created community and connections through the past year.

Part of the 2020 Celebration will highlight what your neighbourhoods have been up to since last year with videos and stories collected by our Celebration Planner, Allison Brown.

Allison is searching for:

Photos, videos, posters and other memorabilia from your neighbourhood projects, gatherings and activities from October 1st, 2019 until November 8th, 2020

Neighbours to share stories about how they support front-line workers, how they are helping each other stay connected and cope with isolation, how they are helping keep each other healthy, experiences organizing and participating in community projects, and how they create neighbourhood inclusion 

This can include food drives, nightly pot-banging supporting health care, window and front yard displays, community gardens, art projects, walks and bike rides, socially distanced gatherings, neighbourhood clean-ups, and anything you and your neighbours were up to this year to stay connected both before and during the pandemic.

Get in touch with Allison to feature your neighbourhood for the 2020 Celebration and contribute your ideas about how you’d like to participate – allison.brown@waterlooregion.org

• Stay tuned to our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/FONKitchener
• Our Twitter: https://twitter.com/FONkitchener

If you are a neighbourly spirit, come and join the 26th Annual Celebration of the Festival of Neighbourhoods on Sunday November 17th, 1-3pm at Kitchener City Hall Rotunda. Regardless of having registered gatherings with the Festival this year or not, come and explore with neighbours from all over the city to fill up your Neighbourhood Loot Bag with ideas that are fun, surprisingly simple, empowering and within your REACH! If you haven’t yet, RSVP by November 7th the number of adults and children to come: entries@festivalofneighbourhoods.ca or 519-579-3800

We can’t help but notice places near our homes that could be improved with a small change, or how our growing city could potentially impact our neighbourhoods. How to harness all the great ideas is best done by sharing and recording them through neighbourhood gatherings. On that journey, the Festival of Neighbourhoods has proven itself to be an invaluable set of tools and resources. Read more in the July E-Neighbour about the Schneider Creek story: “Making our Neighbourhood Great!” and take the Event-in-a-Trailer survey by July 8th to let us know how we can create even better tools and resources for you.

Natural disasters, such as floods and fires, hitting communities far and near have been featuring prominently in the media as we talk more about the climate crisis. What, as neighbourhoods, can we do to be more resilient in the case we are hit by such an event? Trust among the neighbours is the not-so-secret ingredient.

“It is extremely important that you get to know your neighbours beforehand, so that you know who is elderly, who has young children, pets, may have a disability.”

Steve LaRochelle, Emergency Management, City of Kitchener (May E-Neighbour)

The Neighbourhood Connections Award has had a deep impact in neighbourhoods across Kitchener. Festival of Neighbourhoods, in itself, seemingly a simple approach, has contributed enormously in building close and loose ties among people in our community. They are our lifeline of access to information and opportunities. However, the Neighbourhood Connections Award, introduced in 2000 by Social Development Centre, helps us work through equity issues to build community capacity. Read about this unique process, welcomed by the Victoria Park neighbourhood in 2019, and more in our March E-Neighbour.

We have seen some cold spells this winter and we cannot have them discourage us from spending time with our neighbours! Yes, we shovel together, and de-ice our sidewalks together, sure, some people bond and have fun this way. There are many paths to take in neighbourhood winterland. Some ideas are in our Winter E-Neighbour, including the 2018 Annual Celebration Inclusion Recognition Recipient neighbourhoods: Doon South, Schneider Creek, Auditorium and New Doon. Next time you organize a neighbourhood gathering in winter, think of the ways to be inclusive of everyone who cannot skate or walk through snow.

It is time to come together and celebrate! We are expecting you at Kitchener City Hall Rotunda on November 18, 1 to 3 pm. We will share stories and recognize the accomplishments of the neighbours who made their gatherings even more inclusive. Inclusion Challenge Recognitions will be made by the Independent Living Centre Waterloo Region, and we will draw two Neighbourhood Improvement Grants! There is a special announcement regarding the Neighbourhood Connection Award:

Reaching out across the diversity in our neighbourhoods is not easy but is so worth the effort and will enrich the community life in Kitchener

Trudy Beaulne

Wonderful supports received this year to make our celebratory event even more special:

• Boehmers Hargest Block
• Steed and Evans
• Victoria Park Neighbourhood Association
• Alejandra Ivic Re/Max Twin City Realty Inc.
• Grand Valley Society of Architects
• Strassburger
• Mumbly Insurance
• Swanson’s Home Hardware Building Centre
• Freure Homes
• Waterloo Regional Police Service
• Independent Living Centre of Waterloo Region
• ASCEND

You and your neighbours are invited to enjoy a fun afternoon with neighbourly people like you once you have registered a neighbourhood activity with the FoN. Read more in our September E Neighbour about the great Kitchener neighbourhoods and the people behind them! Whether your get-together was simple or elaborate, as long as it was inclusive of all your neighbours and allowed them to interact face to face, it is eligible for prizes and awards. To ensure that your activity qualifies your neighbourhood for the $20,000 capital improvement grant draws just give us a call or email. Register qualifying neighbourhood activities held between October 1, 2017 and September 30, 2018 with the Festival of Neighbourhoods before October 5, 2018. Join us at the Festival Finale at Kitchener City Hall on November 18 from 1:00 to 3:00 pm, when the draws for the $20,000 neighbourhood grants will be held and the winners announced.

Take a look at some of the gatherings hosted in Kitchener neighbourhoods in the summer 2017. In our May edition of thE-Neighbour, you will find ideas and suggestions how to enhance a sense of belonging and connectedness with your neighbours. Summer months are as well the time when our staff and volunteers do outreach and if you want them to stir things up on your street or your building, write to us now at entries@festvialofneighbourhoods.ca. Read more about the neighbourhoods that received a boost in previous years.