- David is involved in a grassroots organization of homeowners and business owners, called “Just Build It”, advocating for social housing

- do we know enough about social housing to advocate?
- how do we become informed? what do we do?

- what is social housing? various definitions...
    -rent subsidized
    -providing housing for those who cannot afford it; partially paid by welfare

- short-term goal: present grassroots org. to provincial government

Q: are you using any social media?
    -wordpress blog: http://dtesjustbuildit.wordpress.com/

Q: who would give you the most impact?
    -provincial government?

-i dea from Maurice: 3 levels of goals - short, medium, and long goals
    -short-term: ex. olympics
        -social media reaches greatest diversity of people
        -find support there and create spotlight on issue
        -identify who your friends and enemies are
        -how to use social media for your benefit
        -tell the story without making it sound like a demonstration; not like anti-olympics

- messages from activists vs. not-in-my-backyard group; David is in a different group: homeowner in the area of interest

- direct communication with low-income community activists: they’ve done own research on why social housing needed...

- what other org’s are you working with? do you have a database of info that can be accessed for others to raise awareness?

- idea from Maurice: keep offering solutions rather than talking about negatives.
    -talk to olympic countries visiting vancouver so that they are aware and spread
    messages across websites
    -ex. Olympics and small restaurant on Denman St. “Olympia”.

- Maurice: Vancouver Sun asked Dalai Lama to be guest editor. Real story: Sun gave Dalai Lama a story to talk about and conveyed it as Dhali Lama’s thoughts/opinions.

-Transparency and Accountability go hand in hand - takes some research to find facts

Q: How has engaging the citizens in the building been?

Q: How do we engage citizens in a neighbourhood/apartment building to come together?

- Maurice: easy for a group of people to send thousands of messages. harder for an individual to send 10,000 messages. 

- how do we use social media to organize this?

- Maurice: don’t tell someone’s story for them.  let the group being affected speak for themselves

- Maurice’s blog/website: leverageolympicmementum.com

-no better time to talk about homelessness than during olympics

[note: please edit as neccessary. notes taken by Kari Chow]