Wyoming Delegation Gains Insights, Builds Connections During Edmonton Visit

With municipalities around the world grappling with increasingly complex safety challenges, Peace in Our Cities is connecting cities with similar challenges to learn from each other and share best practices.

A seven-person delegation from Casper, Wyoming visited Edmonton August 12 to 14 after being paired with Edmonton by Peace in Our Cities. 

“The idea is to pair two of our members to connect with shared experiences, challenges and learn from one another,” says Jai-Ayla Sutherland, Program Officer for Mass Violence and Atrocities at the Stanley Centre for Peace and Security. “In this specific case, we understood that Casper has had increasing violence particularly among youth, including high suicide rates, and we recognized opportunity for Casper to come to Edmonton to see how REACH was created with a mandate from the city, how REACH works, what they do, and how it works with the government.”

The way REACH works with multiple stakeholders, and the innovative approach that the City of Edmonton has taken to approaching violence reduction was a point of interest to the visitors, who wanted to hear about how the city developed the Blueprint for Violence Prevention, and what role the city plays to set the strategy for partners to collaborate. 

During the visit, the delegation met with various partners around the city as well as municipal officials to share the experiences Edmonton has had in addressing the complex urban issues that are common to Casper, as a blue-collar prairie city with economic reliance on oil and gas. While Casper and Edmonton share a lot of similarities, Casper is much smaller with a total population of about 60,000. 

“The basic idea is not reinventing the wheel,” says Jan Fox, Executive Director of REACH Edmonton. We were paired with them because we were seen as having similar challenges. Peace in Our Cities helps advance the agenda of reducing violence by amplifying best practices and facilitating these city exchanges.”

One of the largest differences between Casper and Edmonton, aside from size, is the way that social services and safety initiatives are funded in the American context. This is why Leanne Loya, Program Director at Natrona County Health Collective (NCHT) joined the delegation.  

“The NCHT is the largest private foundation in Wyoming and it serves Natrona county only, which includes the city of Casper,” says Loya. “We do grantmaking and community engagement within Natrona County. Our whole mission is to better the health and wellbeing of county residents.” 

Through the foundation’s community engagement work, Loya often ends up partnering with various organizations in collaboration, similar to the way that REACH works. She sees value in the way REACH collaborates with community groups as well as various levels of government.

“The collaboration between all of those entities really stands out to me and also how robust the evaluation process is,” says Loya. “The way REACH has people come in prior to launching to develop an evaluation process for that. That’s a piece that’s really missing; 

I love that relationship between REACH and the city. There’s independence but collaboration and benefit for both sides.”

“We have found there’s so much bureaucracy and red tape in government systems, if they want to launch something it could take years,” she says. 

The partnership with Peace in Our Cities has given REACH the opportunity to share its learnings with organizations around the world who are working collaboratively in the community, and also to bring best (and next) practices back to Edmonton. 

“Peace in Our Cities showcases us regularly across the world, allowing us to share what we’ve learned about the essential value of locally-based collaboration,” says Fox.

As cities around the world work to build safer communities, relationships and connections that share innovative ideas and approaches are invaluable.

“It’s the municipalities that have responsibility for safety,” says Sutherland. “They may not have all the power but they have the motive. Everybody wants to live in a safe city.”