Say Hello buttons not welcome inside city hall
Councillors also concerned about project’s use of teen volunteers
The man behind a campaign to get Metro Vancouver residents to warm up and say hello to one another says he is getting the cold shoulder from the City of Surrey.
David Beattie and volunteers with the Hello Project hand out buttons people can wear inviting others to say hello, as a way of making the city more welcoming and less alienating.
“You have a sign that’s like a traffic light that sends a silent signal,” Beattie explained. “We need to change our behaviour depending on whether it’s red or green.”
But Beattie and his volunteers are not welcome to spread that message inside Surrey City Hall, where they would like to set up a table.
Laurie Cavan, the city’s general manager of parks, recreation and culture, said the Hello Project is not a good fit for the atrium, where the city has displays promoting some of its programs.
“They’re all passive displays. We don’t have individuals ... approaching the public or approaching city staff promoting programs. It’s just not something we have felt is conducive to the environment here,” Cavan explained.
“We say the same thing in our recreation centres ... people are there for the quiet enjoyment of the recreation facility and we don’t have people promoting other programs and initiatives and approaching people when they come into the facility.”
Beattie and his group plan to conduct a pilot project in Surrey’s city centre area over two to three weeks in the fall, with volunteers handing out buttons and flyers to passersby.
City staff also have reservations about the Hello Project’s use of volunteers, Grade 11 and 12 students from a group called Youth Transforming Society, who also handed out the buttons at the city’s recent Fusion Festival.
Surrey Coun. Judy Villeneuve, who heads the city’s social policy committee, said while she is generally supportive of the Hello Project, she shares some of the concerns raised by staff.
“They felt a little bit worried about who was going to be approaching people, or if there’s young people approaching strangers that they don’t know, what message that could give or if there could be any sort of danger. We felt volunteers should be trained and ... screened,” she said.
City volunteers typically receive training for what they will be doing and undergo a criminal record check, Cavan said.
“For youth that are 16 and 17 years old, we typically don’t have those volunteers out on their own that aren’t being supervised or have a connection with another individual. So it’s both for the screening to ensure that the people the volunteers are working with are in a safe environment and also the volunteers themselves.
“If they want to venture forth and do this in the community, we have no intention of preventing that from happening. But for city programs, this is the protocol that we would be going through.”
Simon Fraser University’s Surrey campus, which was invited to be a partner in the pilot project, shares the city’s concerns, spokesman Kurt Heinrich said in a statement.
But the notion that volunteers need criminal record checks to hand out buttons encouraging friendly interaction is ridiculous, Beattie said.
Beattie and Hello Project codirector Allan Hunt have been making presentations to cities throughout the region for the last six months.
The response from politicians at all levels of government has been overwhelmingly positive, he said.
Beattie was inspired to start the Hello Project after reading a series of articles in The Vancouver Sun on how social isolation affects people in the city. A 2012 survey by the Vancouver Foundation found it was this issue — not affordability, homelessness or crime — that Metro Vancouver residents were most concerned about.
“It is the biggest problem,” Beattie said, “but it gets one20th of the ink that the other issues do.”
Beattie vows the pilot project will go ahead this fall, despite the reluctance of municipal officials.
“We will hand out these buttons and signs and advance the cause of civilization.”