Community GPI

Since the launch of the Nova Scotia Genuine Progress Index in 1997, the strongest interest in the project has been expressed by local communities who are urgently looking for ways to assess their well-being accurately, and to measure their progress genuinely.

It is at the level of local community that "the rubber really hits the road" in terms of quality of life. Communities know viscerally if they are getting safer or not, if job security is growing or not, if people in need are being cared for, if the quality of their air and water are improving or getting worse.

They also know that the economic growth measures conventionally used to assess well-being don't tell the whole story. And they yearn for community development strategies that address the issues that matter to them.

In 1998, Nova Scotia Citizens for Community Development Society, a non-profit group, approached GPI Atlantic to assist in developing community-level genuine progress indicators. As a result, a GPI project was launched in Kings County, Nova Scotia, as a pilot for other communities.

Representatives of more than 40 community organizations met for more than a year, under the auspices of Kings Community Economic Development Agency, to determine appropriate indicators, and to develop a questionnaire to gather the data needed for the index. That questionnaire includes many questions on employment, voluntary work and care-giving, population health, peace and security, and impacts on the environment.

In February, 2000, the National Crime Prevention Centre (NCPC) recognized that the GPI indicators could help communities identify the social and economic causes, costs and impact of crime, and develop annual benchmarks of progress towards creating more peaceful and secure communities. With funding from the NCPC's Business Action Program, a second community-level GPI was launched in March 2000 in Glace Bay, a former coal-mining town with very high unemployment, in industrial Cape Breton.

Funding from the Canadian Population Health Initiative and the Canadian Rural Partnership made it possible to administer 2,000 surveys in each of these two communities. Having undergone detailed review by Statistics Canada experts, and having been tested in both communities, more than 20 residents of Glace Bay and Kings County gathered the necessary data for Canada's first Genuine Progress Indicators.

Beginning in the fall of 2001, the data was entered into a unique new database designed by Dalhousie University's Population Health Research Unit and St. Marys University's Time Use Research Program. Preliminary results have been analyzed and reported back to both communities. The data provide key information on the determinants of health not previously available at the community level and will spawn some major research projects of value nationwide.

From that process a set of annual benchmarks of progress will be developed by each community, and the community GPI will then be ready for "export" to other interested communities.

Put simply, the GPI can assist communities in planning a better future for their children, and in measuring their progress towards that goal.

GPI Atlantic, the N.S. Citizens for Community Development Society, and residents of Glace Bay and Kings County, are willing to assist any other community interested in developing local community-level Genuine Progress indicators.