What is the Community Alliance for a Resilient Kamloops?

Part of the Transition Kamloops philosophy is to build cooperative networks and leverage relationships with our allies—we know that we’re stronger when we stand together! The Community Alliance for a Resilient Kamloops is an embodiment of that approach.

In 2020, we reached out to leaders of other organizations and individuals with an interest in sustainability, and started looking for opportunities to collaborate. We’ve found a lot of common ground, particularly in sharing ideas around reducing our community’s greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to Transition Kamloops, the Alliance members now include the Kamloops Naturalist Club, the local chapter of the BC Sustainable Energy Association, Interfaith Kamloops, and concerned individuals, including several Thompson Rivers University professors.

The first joint project was to encourage citizen participation City’s consultation process for our municipal climate action plan. We organized meetings with City Council members in the lead-up to the final vote, and mobilized our supporters to call City Council members and/or send letters of support encouraging them to pass the Community Climate Action Plan (CCAP). On June 29, 2021, ironically the day that Kamloops broke our all-time high temperature record with a new high of 47.3 degrees with wildfires all around the city, Council unanimously passed the plan.

Since then, our Alliance team has been working on the creation of Sustainability Stories, a series of COVID-friendly, self-guided audio tours connecting various threads related to sustainability. These walkable tours of Kamloops neighbourhoods are guided by online narrations. The Stories are all different—they cover topics as diverse as ecosystem restoration and retail upcycling—but they’re all inspiring! They’ll have you seeing our city in a new way.

We hope to launch Sustainability Stories in the spring of 2022—stay tuned!

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