Hello Centre Wellington!
Thank you for joining us. We are excited to hear from you!
The Township is creating a strategy to improve how we engage the community to inform actions, decisions, and changes that affect our daily lives. This engagement strategy is about more than a single project - it's about building lasting trust and better ways of working together.
Community engagement is about how and when you're involved in shaping change, action and decisions in our community. We know you haven't always felt heard in the past, and we want to do better.
Every voice is important, and we want to hear from everyone. Whether you've lived here all your life or joined our community yesterday. Whether you share your voice at every opportunity or listen quietly in the background. Whether you're a part of a large group, a small group, or no group at all, we want to hear from you.
Project Updates
Project Update Nov. 2025
Thank you to everyone who participated and contributed their ideas over the summer months. A summary of findings and our new draft Community Engagement Charter and Strategy are available for review in our document library (right-hand side of the page). When reviewing each document, you will find that the "What We Heard Report" directly influenced are Draft Community Engagement Charter and Strategy in the following ways:
- 2.4 Hopes for Engagement (from the What We Heard Report) - informed the Vision
- 2.5 What Makes Engagement Meaningful + Effective (from the What We Heard Report) - informed the Goals, Principles + Measures of Success.
- The draft Community Engagement Charter and Strategy was also informed by research of successes and learnings from other municipalities across Canada and international best practices of engagement.
The Draft Community Engagement Charter and Strategy
What We Heard
Do you feel that this draft Charter and Strategy reflects what we heard from the community?
Strengthening Community Engagement
Do you think that this draft Charter and Strategy will help to strengthen community engagement in Centre Wellington?
Importance To You
Does the draft Charter and Strategy reflect what is most important to you?
Feeling Heard
If staff use the guiding principles and measures of success in engagement, will you feel heard in the process?
Join the Conversation Online - allowed members of the community to share their ideas on what engagement should look like.
Host a Conversation - provided members of the community the opportunity to get their friends, family, community and colleagues together to ask for feedback on engagement, without having staff or consultants guiding the conversation.
Have Us Come To You - allowed local community groups, organizations and service clubs to invite staff and consultants to a meeting to ask questions about their vision for engagement.
Coffee Chats - was an opportunity for the community to come out to a local coffee shop and discuss the future of engagement in a relaxed and casual setting.
Come Say Hello - Township staff "popped up" at local community events this summer (2025) to chat with the community about engagement.
Lunch Talks - Township staff and consultants held a Zoom call over a lunch period for those who had the time to chat about engagement.
September Engagement Week - For one week in September, staff and consultants held multiple workshops at different locations and times in the Township to chat about engagement with the community.
No one wants to spend their time without knowing why. Your input will be used to help shape the Township's very first Community Engagement Strategy! We want to engage with you in meaningful, open, transparent and inclusive ways where you will feel like your input makes a difference
We will use your input along with other information:
- INTERNATIONAL: Best practice standards of engagement.
- RESEARCH: Success and learnings from other municipalities across Canada.
- PUBLIC & STAFF: Input from this engagement process.
The Community Engagement Charter:
- Council, with recommendation from staff
The Community Engagement Strategy:
- Council, with recommendation from staff
The Action Plan:
- Staff
The Community Engagement Staff Toolkit:
- Staff
We interact with our community in a lot of different ways for a lot of different reasons. When we say community engagement, we mean:
"An intentional process with the purpose of working in inclusive and respectful ways to shape decisions, actions, impacts, or change. It is: purposeful and goal driven, trust and relationship focused, values based and people centred, inclusive and equity centred, and impact and outcome oriented." - as defined by The International Association of Public Participation (IAP2)
Who is involved in decision making depends on the project. This can be project managers, senior managers, Township Council, or those outside the Township like County Council, the Province, or others.
What's considered in making decisions also depends on the project. For example, this might include technical studies, legislated requirements, best practices and other information including input from the community.
