Despite income desparity, Ottawa Cares continues to unify Rideau-Rockcliffe through pandemic

Community associations in Rideau-Rockcliffe are being praised by City Councillor Rawlson King for coming together during the pandemic. 

“I'm very pleased with the way the community responded to the crisis itself,” he says. “We have a large number of community associations, they all bounded together and worked together throughout the crisis to create a collective called 'Ottawa Cares.'”

King says, through Ottawa Cares, organizations were able to deliver thousands of food hampers to people in the ward. 

He says what makes his ward challenging is the disparity between communities such as Manor Park, New Edinburgh, Lindenlea and Rockliffe Park, which are some of the highest income household communities in the country, compared to Overbrook and Forbes, which have some of the lowest income households. 

“I'm really gratified that the communities, the ward as a whole, came together to support one another, despite the challenges of having larger numbers of racialized people, a larger number of new immigrants, well also have very supportive community members that want to ensure that conditions and quality of life improve for everybody across the ward,” King says.

He says despite the multitude of challenges in the community, at the grass-roots level there are many people working to improve the community. King believes that's been evident during the last year and a half, through initiatives like Ottawa Cares and through other organizations coming together to create local food drives, where they would buy food from local businesses and donate the goods to the local food bank. 

Listen to the full interview with Councillor Rawlson King on The Sam Laprade Show: