A Sense of Community
Posted by auroracitizen on September 24, 2010
Let us take the Canada Day Parade and the Santa Claus Parade and turn these over to the Chamber of Commerce and out of the hands of politicians and their friends.
Let our town government create Aurora Youth Scholarships that would provide our young people with incentives to work in their community and in return receive some financial benefit, and beyond this, receive credits toward their education, all the while performing positive acts that would benefit many less fortunate.
Let us impress upon the parents of our young people that their children can play a meaningful role in the community. Let us convince these parents that they should act as mentors to their sons and daughters to assist in the creation of a generation that cares.
Let the parents and their children initiate and create suitable roles and tasks for themselves, ones that would benefit the entire community, and especially those who are the weakest and most vulnerable.
This is too important to be left exclusively in the hands of elected politicians. There should be an umbrella organization formed consisting of service clubs, business and the town. It should start at the grass-roots level and its objective should be the general improvement of our entire community, from assisting the elderly whenever and however possible, shoveling snow and raking leaves, cleaning up the town, planting trees, providing transport to those unable to move about freely.
There are virtually no limits as to what can be done; to bring a smile to people’s faces, a sense of relief to a worried brow, a feeling of being useful, a sense of self-worth and accomplishment.
Aurora Citizen 
Christopher Watts said
Agreed.
Council needs to remain at arms length, and conflicts of interest as we have seen this term need to be addressed in a transparent manor barring friends and those that receive direct business gain from these events.
The Chamber of Commerce is one outfit I would be confident in handing these events over to, but there are others. Info Aurora is not one of them, they have not proven themselves capable and are in no way able to do the job that Neighborhood Network can do. Why the town has not partnered is a true sign of their ignorance and a slap in the face to all things community focused in town.
Youth and scholarships have been all but ignored in this past term. I applaud any outfit that stands forward that wants to take on the void that this current council has created.
Oh, and whoever this organization is, can we please have our historic horse fair back too. It is insulting to live in a town that lets an event with such history perish, and replace it with such a pathetically plastic street festival. Aurora has rich agricultural roots, let’s celebrate them as a community.
evelyn.buck said
Christopher
Many scholarships are awarded each year at high school commencements. In the last term, Council approved my resolution for A Governance Award to the student who excelled in programs and activities in the field.
My intent was to encourage schools to teach governance and students to take an interest.
There is an active organisation encouraging youth business initiatives and an awards dinner each year. The teen-ager who was selling ice cream in the park during market hours was part of that program.
The Aurora Horse Show came to its end naturally. When Aurora was a smaller community, through most of her history, farming families surrounding the town were part of the community.
Agricultural Fairs are a rural event.The Aurora Horse Show was an event of the rural and the town. The Aurora Horse Show was a Class A and it put the town on the map.
The farmers with the heavy horses did all the work for the show.
Then the light horses started coming in.
The prizes were from industries which are no longer permitted to advertise. Now, I’ve just watched what happened. I haven’t done any research so don’t hold me exactly to my impression of that. But as the light horses, their owners came in competed and left, increased, the farmers decreased and the show was finally taken over by a commercial operation.
The town did her best to keep it going. It was the commercial operation’s decision to end it. It was a sad day but inevitable. Aurora farmers are not there any more in their numbers.
When Councillor Norm Stewart with all his energy started the Santa Claus Parade years ago, it was with the hope the budiness community would take over.
I argued against it. I said it’s a commercial event, we shouldn’t be doing it. But we did. People enjoy it. The business community did not take it over. And I would not be the one to argue we should take it away.
When I was Mayor we commissioned a couple of histories to be written ,One was the History of Aurora Hydro when a new building was constructed. The other was a history of town halls. I think it’s a good thing to do and it would have been a good thing for the history of the horse show when it ended. That was in the last term of Council. At the beginning,of the term,I was warned not to be taking up Council’s time talking about history.
David Heard said
These are the values and beliefs I hold dear.
When we invest in helping others and motivating a sense of community it pays itself forward over and over.
I can tell you from first hand experience that when people care about others and put the “self” on hold amazing things happen.
I owe so many people for helping me believe and know I am part of a community, and that is why good things are happening.
“If we each help one our job is done”
Yes I believe that and as I have said also ……
“There will be change I see the vision”
Peace In
Richard Johnson said
Hear, Hear.