CRM - Empowering Leaders
The image of a mosaic is often used when describing Canada. Its cultural and geographical diversity is both vast and breathtaking. Each unique part of the mosaic is celebrated and protected as a part of its ethos of opportunity, democracy, tolerance and diversity. Our focus in Canada is on the city of Vancouver through the ministry of NieuCommunities. Set against the backdrop of British Columbia’s breathtaking coastal mountain range and rising from the banks of English Bay, Vancouver, with a metro population of nearly 2 million, unites urban excitement with outdoor adventure like no other city in the world. Vancouver is celebrated as one of the most vibrant multi-cultural cities in the world, and a gateway city to the East.
Sitting on the east side of downtown Vancouver, just adjacent to the "poorest postal code in Canada," is the Commercial Drive district. "The Drive," as the locals call it, is a vibrantly progressive and counter-cultural pocket of diversity with over 63 nationalities represented in one 12-block radius. It offers a variety of diverse cultural expressions from an Eastern Indian cinema and an animal rights shelter to a marijuana-smoking café and neighborhood-run soup kitchens. Earnest political conversations can be heard echoing from art galleries and numerous vegetarian cafés and third-world solidarity coffee shops.
This socially and ethnically blended community is one of the major urban development projects in the world as it prepares to host the 2010 Winter Olympics, and yet it is one of the least churched areas in North America. A vast majority of the city's immigrants know very little about Christianity and only 5% of Vancouverites say they attend church regularly. Tucked inside a pocket of stunning scenic beauty this funky urban playground provides a rich training soil for those cultivating a life of incarnational presence, mission, and leadership.