The City of Guelph is a community of approximately 134,000 people just west of Toronto. In 2011, City staff commissioned A Plan for Wellbeing in Guelph that identified the CIW as a guiding framework for a broad Community Wellbeing Initiative called Guelph Wellbeing. The overall goal of the initiative was to ensure all residents have access to the services and supports they need to lead healthy, active, and happy lives.
CIW Engagement
As part of its broader Community Wellbeing Initiative, the CIW partnered with the City of Guelph in 2012 to develop and conduct the first CIW Community Wellbeing Survey.
The results of the survey presented in City of Guelph Community Wellbeing Survey Report 1 are preliminary descriptive statistics, summarizing the findings drawn from questions residents answered about each of the eight CIW domains. The data were weighted to ensure that results are representative geographically within the City of Guelph and that the age and gender distributions matched the City of Guelph’s 2011 census profile.
The second report, City of Guelph Community Wellbeing Survey Report 2, provides a more in-depth look at the results of the survey. In discussion with the Guelph Wellbeing team, two factors were selected as focal lenses for further analysis of the survey results: (1) total annual household income: less than $40,000 and $100,000 or more; and (2) Ward – the six Wards in the City.
A third report, City of Guelph Community Wellbeing Survey Report 3, identifies those indicators, based on the eight CIW domains, that are significantly related to the overall wellbeing of the residents of Guelph.
CIW Director, Dr. Bryan Smale, presented results from the Community Wellbeing Survey at a public event in the Council Chambers on November 20, 2012.
In order to build a trend line of wellbeing data over time, it is hoped that a collaborative of interested organizations in Guelph will engage the CIW to survey a random sample of households every five years.
Community Outcomes
2013
- Guelph Community Wellbeing Initiative: Community Profile, February 2013, created by the City showing how to layer data from multiple sources, including CIW Community Wellbeing Survey data, to create a broader profile of their community.
- Invited as guest speaker across the country. One example:
- Speech by (then) Mayor Farbridge to the Rotary Club, September, 2013. Listen to the first 12 minutes.
- International recognition through Community Indicators Consortium Impact Award
2014 onward
- Discussion Paper: The Guelph difference: Guelph Wellbeing
- Theme Reports:
- Connectivity: Social and Physical
- Food Security
- Housing