Preparations for Quadra Island's First Vital SIgns Report

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - In previous years, bits of Quadra and Cortes Island data have been incorporated in Campbell River’s Vital Signs Reports. This is the first year that both islands are collecting their own data. Cortes has already published its 2024 Vital Signs Report. The Quadra Island Foundation is about to start accumulating the baseline data that will enable it to produce a report for Quadra and  Jody Rodgers, Chair of the Quadra Island Foundation:  “Vital Signs  empowers organizations for tailoring their initiatives: so they can work on things to improve, and also not spin their wheels on things that are already good.  It also really gives them the hard data to apply for grants more effectively.”  “I think that it allows us to gain perspective on the differences in spending needs of organizations.   Vital Signs  is a vehicle for organizations to measure their effectiveness or lack thereof, according to certain benchmarks.”   “One of the problems that Quadra Island as a community has with respect to Vital Signs is it was always tucked in as  this little afterthought to the Campbell River Vital Signs. They got our data from the surveys of Canada. Not only were they out of date, they were not very controlled because only certain people responded to the surveys.  While it was a tiny little sidebar in their large report, I felt like it was non data.” “They also included Cortes and did the same sorts of things based on Surveys Canada. Cortes’ needs may be vastly different than Campbell River's and ours, which is what we strongly suspect.” Cortes Currents: Quadra Island’s needs are different from Campbell River? Jody Rodgers: “Yes, that's why Quadra wanted to break off from being a combined effort. I love the folks over at Campbell River Foundation. They are fantastic and they've been very generous to include Quadra in their Vital Signs report.” Rodgers met with Michaela Arruda and Manda Aufochs Gillespie, Executive Directors of the Campbell River and Cortes Island Foundations, respectively.   “I gently said, we really want to go off and do this ourselves,  if you don't mind, because I think our community would appreciate that too. It'll make it much easier for us to say to these grant writers, ‘we know you've given to XYZ. However we don't share these resources. We are completely separate organizations and entities and communities.' In view of the fact that our communities are unique, it seemed more sensible for us to be able to measure ourselves against ourselves.”  “There are 12 indicators that are part of the Vital Signs. They range from things that are extremely applicable like housing, economy and education, to things that are aspirational, like transportation.”