The tradition of neighbour helping neighbour, the notion of banding together to achieve a common goal – the raising of a barn, a community hall – had seemingly been lost to the lawyers and bureaucrats. Each tout rules and regulations in fear of accepting liability – each word within a bylaw or policy drones on endlessly in the ears of municipal councils and boards of education. It can be an environment of what we cannot do, as opposed to how do we make it happen.

Ironically, joining together to help your neighbours achieve a goal was the birth mother of municipal government. Today sewer, water, roads, and the men who maintain them, remain the very ‘spine’ of a community, but the people are its heart.

That heart beat with passion this week as residents rose up together and took action for themselves – despite the many levels of government and unions, the policies and bylaws, the rules and regulations. Thanks to a handful of progressive and positive thinking people, an interweaving of teachers, union members, business owners, governments and community took place. Now our Hope Secondary School will soon have a safe sports field for our kids to play upon. The volunteers hauled in dirt and sand by the truckload and then raked and raked and raked for days and days until the massive field was level; gone are the ruts and the gullies – which ironically seemed to pose a liability issue in itself for endangering young sports enthusiasts.

If local government had tackled this project alone it would have cost taxpayers thousands of dollars more. The project would never have made it into the school board’s final budget without the community’s donation of time, equipment and materials.

The tradition of residents banding together to identify a need and take action has returned in strength. Quietly kept alive over the years by churches and service clubs, its somewhat slow resurgence seemed to spark up a few years back within two other people-driven initiatives – Story Time in the Park and Communities in Bloom.

And in a small community, struggling with a fickle economy and unhealthy tax base, people need take up a cause as nothing moves very fast in the hands of local government. Besides it is perhaps unhealthy for a community to be so reliant on the bureaucrats.

Today, however, we applaud the Fraser Cascade School District and the District of Hope for working together comparatively quickly and hopefully bending a few policies to make this happen. We also applaud the committee for staying on track and thinking positively, as they now eye their next challenge – other sports fields throughout Hope which are also in need of a facelift if we are ever to attract league play.

There are a lot of wins-wins here. Jobs will be protected as this is the people’s project and no longer will the moms and dads of over 200 local soccer enthusiasts accept their sports fields going without proper maintenance and water. Local governments will have to make that work.

– Simone Rolph (Black Press)