Our Community Impact

We take a holistic approach to civic literacy, with a focus on nurturing skills for effective self-advocacy. Our topics are driven by current events and our students’ interests. Our learners explore varied subjects through guest speakers and field trips that provide hands-on learning opportunities and build community connections.

When students find a topic that ignites their passions, we will tailor programming around their interests and goals. This may culminate in a deputation to municipal council. Students’ interests often centre on improving areas of our community that have traditionally been under-served.

Staff help support students through conducting research; critical thinking and exchanging ideas; supporting their arguments with evidence; writing and editing their presentations; and rehearsing their delivery.

This is transformative work. Students develop tremendous confidence through the process, and rightly take pride in their results. Deputations by PELC students advocating for our community have resulted in:

• New sidewalks, lighting and a crosswalk on the Heights to enhance pedestrian safety
• Establishing a municipal food security working group
• Student feedback on the County’s Short-Term Accommodations (STA) draft plan
• A neighbourhood vision for improvements at Macaulay Village Park on the Heights

Park improvements on the Heights in Picton are nearly complete! New playground equipment has been installed at Macaulay Village Park on London Avenue, along with trees and a sun shelter, transforming the once-sparse area into a vital recreation area and community hub.

Residents had wanted to improve the park for years. PELC Essential Skills Coordinator Jennifer Hunter spearheaded a renewed, neighbourhood-driven initiative, bringing together volunteers and support from all sectors, and integrating PELC curriculum support in civic literacy and community advocacy.

The project unfolded in many stages:

• Listening to community needs
• Applying for several grants
• Planting community garden beds
• Working with learners to research and present a deposition to County Council, advocating for park improvements
• Partnering with VTLA Studio to produce drawings for a community-engaged park design and food garden
• Installing a sun shelter (during the United Way Day of Caring)
• Hosting tree-planting parties with native saplings
• Installation of new play equipment

This work brought together an incredible group of committed volunteers and learners, and many generous donations of building materials, excavating, soil and saplings, not to mention time, talent and expertise!

View the photo essay in our Nov. 2023 newsletter

When food security emerged as a student interest, we launched a project combining food literacy and community action: growing our own food!

PELC students started gardening at Delhi Park Community Gardens in 2020, led by volunteer Fionn Stanners. A team of gardeners took turns watering, weeding and harvesting. Everyone shared in the harvest.

Beginning in 2022, we focused on creating opportunities to grow food in the Heights — an empowering way to increase food security. We received permission from the County to move our community garden plot to Macaulay Village Park (on London Avenue) and received a Seed It grant to plant two small beds.

The park went through a major revitalization in 2023 with new landscaping and play equipment. There’s even a watering cube on site! Christine and Tori from the Learning Centre built new garden beds in 2024 and filled them with vegetables, herbs and flowers. The Macaulay Village community stepped up to take care of the gardens and water them through the garden season.

Looking forward to 2025, we’re working with our board member Bailey Austin-Macmillan of VTLA Studio and exploring the potential for garden beds for individual community members. There is a volunteer opportunity for a leadership position to plan and plant the communal garden beds in the spring. Contact us to get involved! Contact Jennifer Hunter: jennifer@pelc.ca.

There’s no better way to nurture a lifelong love of reading than for families to read together. Through our partnership with County Kids Read, a selection of children’s books is always available at PELC.

CKR also has a free book pop-up twice a month at our PEC Fresh Good Food Market in Picton — typically the first and third Wednesday of each month. Shoppers can take home a free book with their fresh fruits and vegetables.

Since 2021, PELC has partnered with CKR and Prince Edward County Library to host an annual Reading Round-Up on the Heights. This has grown into a community barbecue with events for the whole family. Kids are happy to hear a story, get their own library cards, and take home a free book! These events are a great opportunity to build community connections, and gather feedback on community needs and promote advocacy.

Prince Edward Learning Centre, Thrive PEC and the County Foundation are collaborating with community members to advocate for development that gives back to the community. Focusing on existing plans for development, a new local Community Benefits Network (CBN) will work with developers and the municipality to map out community-defined needs and goals.

Their goal was to learn how other communities have created Community Benefits Networks — coalitions to achieve community visions for affordable housing, decent jobs and other investments — and apply those lessons here.

Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs) are negotiated agreements between a private or public development and a coalition of community-based groups. Communities identify their needs and negotiate tangible outcomes. Typical benefits can include jobs, training, apprenticeships, neighbourhood improvements and units set aside for affordable housing.

Community wealth building strategies differ from traditional approaches to reducing poverty by focusing on development — such as public infrastructure — working with funding that is already allocated. Most agreements incorporate the interests of people who do not typically benefit from economic growth, such as young adults, newcomers and low-income communities.

A community-led vision for Prince Edward County started taking shape in 2023 through a consultation process led by Thrive PEC. It continued with a series of community conversations about community benefits organized by PELC, bringing together community members to define what it is they would like from  developers. This resulted in the creation of a Community Benefits Framework for Prince Edward County — the first rural framework in the country — which provides a community-informed basis for discussions with specific developers. The first Community Benefits Agreement in PEC was signed with Pinecrest Housing in 2025, formalizing shared goals for the adaptive reuse of the former Pinecrest School in Bloomfield to create non-profit housing and a community hub.

Other plans for new development in Prince Edward County — including upcoming projects by Quinte Health Care Corporation, Base31, Cork and Vine, and VineRidge — may lead to more than 10,000 new homes and rental units, representing tremendous potential for impact.

In 2023, PELC hosted a series of presentations on community wealth building. With all the new development planned in Prince Edward County, there is increasing interest in how development can be harnessed to help realize a community vision. The first step is to bring the community together to define what it would like to see.

The Heights (Macaulay Village) neighbourhood in Picton established a neighbourhood group in order to begin this visioning work, and articulate what kind of community improvements residents would like to see.

In 2023 and 2024, PELC gathered input through a series of community conversations and surveys. The results were presented in a Neighbourhood Plan.

For more information, email Chris Durant: christine.durant@pelc.ca

Greater Than County Youth Collective

Greater Than was established as a collaboration of youth-serving agencies founded in 2015, including the ROC (Recreational Outreach Centre), the Students Commission of Canada, and the County Foundation. The group chose its name to signify by working together, we are greater than the sum of our parts.

In 2021, the group produced a Shared Learning Report examining the state of youth in Prince Edward County:

In 2022, Greater Than was invited to participate in the Community Building Youth Futures project, a youth-led initiative to raise high school graduation rates in Prince Edward County, funded by the Tamarack Institute and Government of Canada. As we progress toward our ultimate goal, success is measured in increased school attendance, participation in different activities, and engagement with community resources.

This collective impact project was national in scope, with data collected across 20 communities. Youth remain at the centre of the process, collaborating with mentors in business, government, and youth-serving agencies to break down barriers to youth engagement.

Local innovations include:

• Digital strategies to engage youth
• Digital storytelling, including a widely viewed video about youth experiences with housing insecurity
• Free youth events in public spaces
• Honorariums rewarding youth participation and achievement
• Hosting “hackathons” to co-design solutions to issues that are important to youth
• A documentary about a youth songwriting experience, engaging youth in post-production

The hackathon model has helped amplify youth voices and supported youth engagement, empowerment and leadership, including a youth-built website!

Greater Than has now moved into its next phase, maintaining a sustainable community presence that will continue to support youth-led initiatives and keep youth voices front and centre, with support from community agencies including the County Foundation, Picton BIA and PELC.

www.greaterthancyc.ca

Youth Community Action Project (YCAP)

YCAP worked to establish safe spaces for youth, and seed youth-identified activities in PEC, with support from the Municipal Community Grant Program and the Community & Economic Development Commission. Though YCAP has been replaced by the Greater Than County Youth Collective, these YCAP-funded projects live on:

• Gender & Sexuality Alliance (GSA): a group of 2SLGBTQ+ high school students and allies who get together to be in a safe space during their lunch hour
• Inclusion Committee: student activists supporting the needs of marginalized communities within the high school, by working to create safer spaces
• Discover YOUth: a community hangout for 2SLGBTQ+ folks
• A mural at the Recreational Outreach Centre (ROC)
• Eagle Eye, a youth-produced newspaper at Athol-South Marysburgh School