The concept for this site was born when a group of us at West End Community Businesses were launching Ottawa-Carleton's; s first green community initiative. We wanted to improve our understanding of how to improve our own program'; impact of s. In securing the funding of the Ontario and Canadian governments, we have been encouraged - and enabled - to step back from the day-to-day urgencies of our particular agenda and take a broader and longer stance.
We edited a workbook on what we found. It included 25 residential case studies from communities across North America whose programs we had studied. He also further developed the community-based social marketing framework that had been developed by Doug McKenzie-Mohr, and published by NRTEE in "Promoting a Sustainable Future: An Introduction to Community-Based Social Marketing." We are grateful to the many people who collaborated in the preparation of the manual which served as the basis for the site.
Jay led the work and co-wrote the work log with Doug. Our workbook was later reprinted and edited by The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE). Free download
The workbook was designed so that it could later turn into an interactive website. Health Canada has enabled us to make that happen, and expand the scope to include health promotion. We now invite others to join us in further developing and promoting the site, so that it can become an even better resource for program planners and implementers across the globe.