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2- The Oakville Beaver, Wednesday July 23, 2008 www.oakvillebeaver.com Report ready in October Continued from page 1 MacLachlan College Openings still available for September 2008 Give your child the private school advantage ASCENDING NEW HEIGHTS MacLachlan College is a candidate school for the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme. This school is pursuing authorization as an IB World School. These are schools that share a common philosophy-- a commitment to high quality, challenging, international education that MacLachlan believes is important. MacLachlan College is a co-educational university prep school Pre-Kindergarten to Grade 12 337 Trafalgar Road, Oakville, Ontario (905) 844-0372 ext. 235 registrar@maclachlan.ca www.maclachlan.ca release its Vital Signs report card on the town. Reports will also be released simultaneously by community foundations across Canada conducting similar studies in their communities. The CFO is nearly finished its "checkup" on which the Vital Signs report will be based. It hired a researcher and completed several months of research and data collection and liaised with stakeholders across town. The CFO now wants to hear from Oakville residents to glean the final input -- the public's grading of Oakville on 11 issues. Those issues include: health and wellness; arts and culture; learning; getting started; work; the gap between rich and poor; housing; environment; belonging and leadership; and, safety. This month, residents will receive an email survey asking them to grade Oakville in each of the 11 interest areas for the report. If residents don't get an e-mail, they're encouraged to visit www.thecfo.org to participate. While most Vital Signs reports cover 10 areas, Oakville -- in its first year of joining 16 other CFOs across Canada in compiling the Vital Signs report -- has added an eleventh called Getting Around. "The grading will be included in our published report as well as our website. We feel that this grading process is the most "We feel that this grading process is the most valuable part of the report and it serves two purposes: increasing the community's awareness of the realities that exist within Oakville and inversely, increasing the understanding of Oakville agencies and organizations about how residents feel about the issues in the town." Rusty Baillie, CEO Community Foundation of Oakville Celebrating CANADIAN QUALITY Factory Authorized Sale! SAVE NOW ON Please N t : Pl Note Store Will Be ll CLOSED FOR VACATION FOR ONE WEEK July 28th - August 4th 217 Lakeshore Road East Downtown Oakville Since 1953 www.swissinteriors.com 905.844.3530 valuable part of the report as it serves two purposes: increasing the community's awareness of the realities that exist within Oakville, and inversely, increasing the understanding of Oakville agencies and organizations about how residents feel about the issues in the town," said CFO CEO Rusty Baillie. Those interested in being a grader for Oakville's Vital Signs, can also e-mail amoten@thecfo.org. "Oakville's Vital Signs is going to be a report worth reading. Three months into the process of meeting with community stakeholders, collecting research, and sifting through data have already resulted in a wealth of knowledge about our Town that we did not know before," states the CFO's website. "So far, Oakville's Vital Signs has challenged our perceptions, and forced us to look beyond what we traditionally knew as Oakville," reports the website. Oakville's Vital Signs will offer a broad brush view of the community -- via a combination of data-driven indicators and community grading -- and how well the town is doing. An abridged version of the report will be published in The Oakville Beaver. A glossy report will be available for a more in-depth read. All the background data will also be available on the CFO's website for anyone interested in delving right into the research and findings, said Baillie. The report will be divided into eleven distinct areas -- 10 standardized across the 16 communities also compiling Vital Signs reports and the 11th, Getting Around, the additional topic the CFO chose to include. "This year is our first year publishing this report, and in fact, the first report of its kind on Oakville. We are very excited about the project, and we have agreed to publish this report for at least the next three years," said Baillie. In collecting data, the CFO has built new relationships with agencies and organizations throughout the region, and solidified other existing relationships. Vital Signs is an annual community check-up conducted by community foundations across Canada. Vital Signs is based on a project of the Toronto Community Foundation and is co-ordinated nationally by Community Foundations of Canada. The Community Foundation of Oakville has been operating since 1994 when it began with $355,000 in assets. The CFO made its first community grant of $10,000 to a coalition that built the Waterfront stage in Coronation Park. The CFO's mission is to strengthen the fabric of the community through effective management of its donors' everlasting gifts and to provide an active leadership role in Oakville. Baillie said the Vital Signs report will assist the CFO in obtaining a snapshot of the community and guidance to better direct its funding. The United Way is keen to see the report, said Baillie, for similar reasons. According to Baillie, the Oakville Chamber of Commerce sees the report as a valuable tool to sell the town to prospective businesses looking to locate here, as well as provide compelling evidence with which to approach local government for improvement. For more information, visit www.thecfo.org.