The Great Beginnings Program: Old Streets, New Pride

In 2008, $10 million was allocated to the City of Vancouver to celebrate the history, heritage, and culture of Vancouver’s first urban areas. Gastown, Chinatown, Japantown, and Strathcona – often referred to as the Downtown Eastside - were the recipients of this funding, which is used for initiatives that specifically address physical, social and economic improvements in these neighbourhoods.

The central goal of the Great Beginnings Program is to create more community pride, liveability and public appeal in this founding neighbourhood. The initiative celebrates the people, culture and a history that shaped the beginnings of Vancouver as a city, and creates safe and inviting places where residents and visitors can live, work, shop and socialize.

Social and economic improvements and creative capital-building opportunities are central targets to Great Beginnings projects. Wherever possible, projects hire, train or provide capacity-building opportunities to local residents and community members through project engagement, partnerships, and collaboration with local not for profit organizations.

The overarching goal of The Great Beginnings Program is to enhance the community pride, livability, and public appeal of Vancouver’s first urban areas through improvements to the physical, social, and economic environments. To facilitate successful realization of this goal, the staff team developed five program themes:

• Public Space Improvements – physically improving public spaces such as parks, streets, sidewalks, and lanes.
• Arts and Culture – expanding existing
  arts and cultural events through support
  and funding.
• Community Living – making the
  Neighbourhood more liveable and getting
  more local residents involved in community
  activities.
• Capacity-Building – raising the capacity 
  of the community through project engagement,
  partnerships, and collaboration.
  
• Community Pride – creating opportunities for
  DTES residents and businesses.
  

DTES residents and businesses.

The Great Beginnings Program (GB) is being coordinated with activities undertaken through the City of Vancouver’s Olympic Social Sustainability Program for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (OSS), and The Vancouver Agreement (VA), creating the DTES Inter-Governmental Initiative. The three programs all are designed to improve:

1. The physical environment
2. The social environment
3. The economic environment and creation of local work opportunities

By linking up with the OSS and the VA, the Great Beginnings Program has been able to leverage funds and increase its ability to create legacies and lasting positive change in the DTES. Many projects are supported by a combination of GB, OSS and VA funds. (See box below for further information on both these initiatives.)

For detailed information about the Great Beginnings Program, please see links below for annual year end reports:

• The Great Beginnings 2010 Year End Report ( PDF 6MB)
• The Great Beginnings 2009 Year End Progress Report ( PDF 140MB)
• June 2009 Project Progress Report ( PDF 1.28mb)
• 2008 Project Progress Report & Evaluation ( PDF 2.33mb)

[top]