Fred Alvarado
Dimitrije Martinovic
54 Weekly News episodes have been produced so far with the purpose of making information accessible to everyone in Toronto's Regent Park community and surrounding areas, engaging residents on what’s happening in the community, and building social cohesion and inclusion.
Our greater emphasis is on reporting on the Regent Park Social Development Plan—a community wide initiative focused on social inclusion— along with civic issues impacting the community such as the Regent Park redevelopment of Phases 4 & 5, Moss Park revitalization, homelessness and food insecurity in Downtown East communities, safety and wellbeing, affordable housing, employment opportunities and events in the neighborhood.
We cover hybrid community meetings to keep residents aware of important events unfolding in Regent Park, in particular those who cannot attend in-person events after the covid-19 pandemic.
Our reporting is a channel for the community to tell their stories and have a voice like the recent coverage about Allan Gardens encampments, discussions about rezoning perspectives and impacts of redevelopment.
Woven into all of these activities is the critical contribution of our volunteers, from high school coop students, to college and university placement students, and community members, our volunteer base keeps us connected to the diversity of our community. As well, there is another aspect of work that we do that enables deeper levels of engagement with civic issues, that is interviewing political leaders and learning about how the different levels of government function, that offer insights rarely available to people in their day-to-day lives.
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About LJI
LJI Impact is the section of commediaportal.ca where the journalists and their organizations participating in CACTUS' Local Journalism Initiative can share their greatest successes.
Through the written stories, photos and videos you see in the LJI Impact section, you'll be able to read first hand accounts about how the presence of a community journalist is making a difference in communities across Canada through the Local Journalism Initiative and the Community Media Portal.
The Community Media Portal is a gateway to the audio-visual media created by community media centres across Canada. These include traditional community TV and radio stations, as well as online and new media production centres.
Community media are not-for-profit production hubs owned and operated by the communities they serve, established both to provide local content and reflection for their communities, as well as media training and access for ordinary citizens to the latest tools of media production, whether traditional TV and radio, social and online media, virtual reality, augmented reality or video games.
The Community Media Portal has been funded by the Local Journalism Initiative (the LJI) of the Department of Canadian Heritage, and administered by the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) in association with the Fédération des télévisions communautaires autonomes du Québec (the Fédération). Under the LJI, over 100 journalists have been placed in underserved communities and asked to produce civic content that underpins Canadian democratic life.
