SDP Stakeholders Meeting November 27, 2024

On November 27th, 2024, the Regent Park Social Development Plan (SDP) Stakeholders Table convened for its quarterly hybrid meeting at the Urban Pavilion in Regent Park, located at 660 Dundas St East 3rd floor. 

The major item for the meeting was a presentation of the SDP strategic plan by the Strategic Planning Committee. 

Chaired by Regent Park Resident, the meeting followed an agenda that included Introduction, Status of the SDP strategic Plan and City Refresh, Summary of the Strategic Plan Process, Approval of Major Changes, Next Steps, Announcements City of Toronto meeting.

The meeting began with a warm welcome and land acknowledgment by SDP resident co-chair Walied Khogali Ali. Walied, who provided an overview of the SDP's purpose: Community Belonging through inclusion and social cohesion.

He also explained the parts of the SDP network which includes the stakeholders table, the working groups: Safety network, community building, employment and economic development, communication, and the committees: planning, evaluation, funding, terms of reference, and community benefits.

Regent Park resident, Deany Peters, began the business of the meeting by providing some background information about  2024 SDP Strategic Plan, a process conducted by the Strategic Planning Committee of the SDP to involve the membership of the SDP in reviewing and changing SDP structures, directions and activities for the next 3 to 5 years.

The 2024 SDP Strategic Plan’s purpose is to help the SDP to be current and relevant, be effective, be strategic and analytical. The Strategic Plan also identifies opportunities for new growth, new partnerships and new roles.

Deany also spoke about the City Refresh of the SDP, a process conducted by the City of Toronto to review primarily the City’s role in the SDP.  According to Deany, the City’s Refresh may also affect the SDP processes and structure.

Grassroots agency member, Michael Rosenberg, explained the Consensus Decision Making process.
According to Michael the goal of this meeting, is for the SDP Stakeholders Table is to review the propose changes that the SDP Strategic Planning Committee is presenting to the SDP Stakeholder’s Table, for members to decide whether or not to approve them.   

Next, Regent Park resident and Co-chair of the Community Building Working Group, Elena Taghizadeh, presented the proposed new goals of the SDP.

The SDP new overall goal, is to engage in projects that create a sense of belonging, inclusion and cohesion to bring Regent Park together as one community and improve the social environment in Regent Park.
The reasons for changing the goal by expanding on the previous goal of social inclusion and cohesion, is to make it clearer to members, that inclusion and cohesion mean one Regent Park inclusive of income, language, culture, age and indicate that the SDP features projects that benefit the community. 

The new goal of the SDP was unanimously passed by the Stakeholders Table. 

Next, Michael, presented on the new Strategic Directions. The new Strategic directions will provide guidance on what needs to be done across the SDP network, working groups, and committees.

They are:
Create a sense of belonging inclusion, and cohesion that brings Regent Park together;
Improve the social environment in Regent Park;
Empower residents and resident’s groups to set priorities both within the SDP and for Regent Park;
Have equal numbers of TCHC and Market residents;
The new Strategic Directions of SDP was unanimously passed by the Stakeholders Table.  
Adonis Huggins, an agency member and co-chair of the Communications Committee, outlined the proposed changes around Decision Making. Currently the Stakeholder’s table makes major decisions for the SDP.

The proposed new change is that the Planning Committee should be the place where decisions should be made and not the Stakeholders Table. Instead the Stakeholders table should be a place for all stakeholders including residents and organizations, to gather for the purpose of engagement, consultation and information sharing but not decision making.

Adonis explained the reasons for the change in decision making powers.

The SDP Stakeholders Table only meets four times a year and often does not have time, nor the background information, required to consider major decisions.

The Planning Committee, on the other hand, meets weekly and as a consequence, most decisions are already being made by the Planning Committee since it is able to give detailed consideration to each matter.

The change will enable increased opportunities for residents to be involved in decision making.  
If approved the role of the planning committee will change from its present role of coordination and alignment and only making decisions on time sensitive issues to:  making decisions for the SDP; receiving updates from the working groups and committees; being responsible for coordination and alignment, resourcing, strategic planning, monitoring, evaluation, data-management, and maintaining documents. The other SDP committees will now be subcommittees of the planning committee.  
Adonis also introduced changes to the membership of the Planning Committee.

While anyone can still participate on the Planning Committee, only active residents and organizational members of each working group and committee can be on the Planning Committee as formal voting members.

Representation from all working groups and committees will be required at planning committee. Additionally, at least half of the voting members on the planning committee from each working group or committee must be residents.

Adonis reemphasized the point that all non-voting members, including representatives from the City of Toronto, TCHC, Developers, Executive Directors Network and residents and organizations who are not active in a working group, can still participate in the Planning Committee’s consensus decision making process, they will not be able to be allowed to participant in any voting process related to decision making.

Adonis explained that the term “Active Member of working Group or Committee” will be defined in the Terms of Reference, a document that outlines the structure, procedures and role of the SDP.

When it came time for the Stakeholders Table to make a decision around the proposed changes to decision making and the changes in the membership of planning committee, some members objected to the proposal to have the Planning Committee be the decision-making body of the SDP.

After some debate a compromised was reached and a decision was made to have both the Planning Committee and the Stakeholders Table be empowered to make decisions on a trial period of one year’s time. 

The new amendment, with three abstentions, was unanimously passed by the Stakeholders Table.  
Resident Wailed Khogali Ali, continued with new proposals related to the changes of the Working Groups.

Currently the SDP has 4 working groups (safety, community building, employment and economic development and communication). 

According to new changes —any resident and organization that operates in Regent Park to improve the social environment in Regent Park and are aligned with social inclusion and cohesion in their may aspects can become a working group.

Working groups will follow the SDP Terms of Reference.

Wailed highlighted the reasons for change which is to increase relevance and responsiveness of the SDP.
According to Wailed, expanded working groups will be able to better engage the participation of linguistic and cultural groups, youth, seniors and marginalized people.

The presented changes to the Working Groups were unanimously passed by the Stakeholders Table.  
The next section was about Co-chairs presented by Deany Peters.

Although there was no changes, in the structure of the SDP co-chairs, all organizations that were responsible for appointing co-chairs (RPNA, TCHC and the ED Network) will, for transparency, inform the planning committee of the procedures it uses to select SDP co-chairs and the and the Planning Committee can only refuse to accept the co-chairs if the procedures were not followed.

Additionally the role of all organizations and agency co-chairs involved in the SDP are to support resident leadership.

The changes to the Co-chairs were unanimously passed by the Stakeholders Table. 

Conflict resolution changes was presented by Michael Rosenberg. 

A year ago, the Shaping SDP Culture policy and procedures was adopted by SDP network for a trial period.

Michael informed members that the new proposal is to include the Shaping SDP Culture into the terms of reference. 

Additionally the SDP plan included the goal of increasing the network’s capacity to engage in conflict resolution, mediation and in responding to trauma. 

Lastly, to ensure that violation complaints are not ignored, the SDP administrative assistant role will be expanded to help members navigate the conflict resolution process and to help members fill out reports on incidents. 

These incident reports will be given back to the working group or committee where the issue arose.
One of the reasons for changes is to ensure that violations of the Shaping SDP Culture are addressed and that the use of the conflict resolution process is increased. 

The changes to Conflict Resolution were unanimously passed by the Stakeholders Table.  

The Stakeholders Table of November 27, 2024, meeting concluded with announcements.