Latest News

---

Here is the final result of the collective volunteer effort applied to the little known and overgrown Porcher park in Central Langford. Check out the difference from the picture in our earlier post on September 9th last year. WOW. After 4 community events, the reclaimed park, rid of invasives, is sporting about 150 newly planted native plants. In this case "community" included the collaborative efforts of  volunteers from the Greater Victoria Green Team (about 30% from Langford), Langford Fire/Rescue (Firesmart)  and ourselves, LRAS....all supported by the City of Langford. What a great team effort and result. Go check out, under our "Projects" section, the details on upcoming opportunities at Westhills Park.  

Our first annual AGM will be held March 12th from 7-9PM. More details will be forthcoming in an email update to all members (expect end of January). The AGM will give members an opportunity to meet each other as well as the current Board of Directors. The current Board of Directors will also provide a summary on past and future activities as well as the annual financial report. Additionally, voting will take place to either affirm the current directors or appoint new ones.  

Collaboration is what LRAS does and so for our green spaces projects we have partnered up with Friends of Cedar Vale Park. We encourage all of our members and friends to attend a shrub planting community event at Cedar Vale Park this Saturday Oct 14th from 1-3 PM.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1806151702929158/permalink/2320120944865562/

What a great meeting today with our local MLA Ravi Parmar! It's no surprise that a lot of our discussion centred around youth and community engagement...areas that we are both very passionate about. He was very supportive of our Langford youth space project and offered to help identify additional collaboration partners and funding sources. Thank you so much MLA Parmar for giving us this meeting, and offering your ongoing support and continued engagement with LRAS!!

The directors of LRAS, one with a volunteer connection to JENEECE PLACE (JP), recently responded to a request for help after JP had their bikes stolen from their locked storage locker. LRAS put out a quick call to a Langford neighbourhood group for bike donations and within 3 days LRAS had some very rusty bikes refurbished, tuned up and donated to JENEECE PLACE. Yup, we know JP isn't in Langford but we're quite sure there's a number of Langford residents with a connection to those that have needed JP's services...and that's good enough for us. Community is about neighbours helping neighbours. Sometimes the smallest projects can generate comfort for so many. Here's a picture of some of the LRAS directors with some of the refurbished bikes. 

Given that one of our missions is to enhance our natural spaces, LRAS has started the process of exploring collaboration with the City of Langford and the Greater Victoria Green Team (GVGT). This Sunday, GVGT will hold their first cleanup in Langford at Porcher Park and LRAS encourages members to sign up for this event.  https://buff.ly/3EzSLZv Some of our leadership team will be there so let's roll up our sleeves and go pull some invasive Ivy!! In the coming weeks we will be discussing with the Parks department (and other like minded organizations) what potential beautification projects might be a good fit for us. If members have any locations or ideas for enhancing our natural spaces, please email us (lras2023secretary@gmail.com).  

Several weeks ago, MP MacGregor reached out to the LRAS Board of Directors to offer a meeting to discuss LRAS and the Youth Space project. That meeting occurred today. We had an excellent dialogue and MP MacGregor offered tremendous support to the concept of LRAS as well as to the concept of a Langford Youth Space project. He expressed interest to help wherever possible, including letters of support and assistance in areas like navigating potential sources of funding. He reiterated that this meeting was just the start of his collaboration, and he asked to be updated regularly on our status as time goes by. He also expressed his desire to meet the board of directors in person when he is back in the riding. He encouraged us to reach out to MLA Parmar to have a similar meeting on potential provincial level collaboration.   Thank you so much for your LRAS support and your community mindedness MP MacGregor!!!

 After hearing pre-membership feedback from Langford residents, LRAS Directors have voted unanimously to amend the Constitution to remove Paragraph 5 of the Mission Statement.  This paragraph deals with lobbying all levels of government for good governance (paraphrased) and could be conceived as political in nature.  The Directors have committed to keeping LRAS a non political organization, focused on improving our community.  In addition, the Directors took the opportunity to update the Bylaws by adding clarity to membership requirements and information management. The Directors are confident that LRAS has a Constitution and Bylaws that will promote success. We look forward to full engagement by membership on this and all other organizational issues in the future. The new documents can be found under our documents section of our webpage. 

Customers have questions, you have answers. Display the most frequently asked questions, so everybody benefits.