Thompson Rivers University
EN-9: Community Partnerships

Two staff members from the TRU Office of Environment and Sustainability (TRUOES) sit on the steering committee of the local non-profit organization The Fraser Basin Council, Thompson Regional Committee (FBC). The FBC brings people together to advance sustainability in the Fraser River basin and across British Columbia. Established in 1997, FBC is a collaboration of four orders of government (federal, provincial, local and First Nations), along with those from the private sector and civil society.

The TRU Office of Environment and Sustainability (TRUOES) is collaborating with several sustainability non-profits in town (6 approx.) to host a new sustainability film series, which starts in December 2014. One film per month will be shown on campus. TRUOES will get a campus theatre space donated for the series, and will help promote the films through its large number of social media and campus contacts. A selection committee with members from all involved parties will decide on which films to show.

The TRU Office of Environment and Sustainability (TRUOES) has partnered with the Fresh Outlook Foundation and, along with The City of Kamloops and other organizations, has signed-on as a major sponsor to bring to Kamloops a ground-breaking new sustainability conference, the CommUnity Innovation Lab (February 3-5, 2015). This is the first event of its kind, and TRU and the City of Kamloops are helping to develop an event planning template that other communities can use to run similar conferences.
TRUOES has secured the venue at TRU to house the conference, will provide catering for all delegates during the conference, will promote the entire conference through its extensive social media and campus-wide contacts, and will help organize a 'Sustainability Village' (whereby any for-profit or non-profit sustainability-related organiazation can set-up a booth to promote what they do for the general public to see).
Staff from TRUOES have been at the conference planning table every step of the way to develop this unique conference which plans to attract 300-400 delegates from all walks of life and from all over BC who are interested in both the process and the outcomes of the conference.
The process of the conference started in June 2014 and has involved organizing meetings involving Kamloops community members from every sector of society(business, government, academia, non-profits, First Nations, health, faith, recreation, arts, immigrants, etc.) in order to decide not only on key structural and formatting aspects of the conference, but, more importantly, three key issues that Kamloops is currently facing, which will be the foci of the February conference and which will be work-shopped by delegates to arrive at actionable solutions to. These solutions will then be taken over by an individual over the next twelve months to try and bring them to reality.
The outcomes of the conference will be a combination of what delegates have to say about the conference once it's over, and how well the arived-at solutions come to life after the twelve months are over (in February 2016), and, since it's a very new and unique format for a conference, how well the conference-planning template will be adopted by other communities who want to plan their own community innovation labs.
For more details on the event visit one of two links: http://freshoutlookfoundation.org/events/community-innovation-lab-kamloops-bc/; or, under Fresh Outlook Foundation, http://www.tru.ca/sustain/links.html