LAMP News and Views – Message from Russ Ford

A recent message from Russ Ford of LAMP:

Good day everyone, I hope you are having a good weekend. The weather was not great but Thanksgiving will soon be upon us and with that guaranteed good weather.

A couple of points of interest this week.On Thursday night Lakeshore Collegiate will be holding its commencement. Congratulations to all the grads and especially to Maggie Iyer who will be receving the Brendan Ford Memorial Scholarship at the ceremony. Maggie was one of three winners this year with the other two coming from Redmond. This is the first time we have given out three scholarships but the qualities demonstrated by Ms. Iyer, Ms Correa and Ms. Hoang left us with no choice. The scholarship winners must have demonstrated a commitment to social justice and each will receive $2,000. And yes, I am accepting donations.

Later this week I will be meeting with Ministry of Health staff around the possibility of building an addition to LAMP. We are busting out of the building and the plan is to build out into the east parking lot. I will keep you posted on that.

I want to give a shout out to the social services department at Humber College. This past week I was invited to review the proposed curriculum for a new degree in community development. Long over due and thanks to Humber for seizing on this. If all goes well the program will start in September 2015.

Finally this week’s blog is once again focussing on community democracy and you all know how I support a much more engaged approach to democracy. You can read it at www.lampchc.org and go to the blog tab. As always please comment if any thing I say moves you to do so.