Dear Friends, Colleagues and Communities we serve,

We wanted to reach out while we all continue to process the far-reaching, and very near and dear impacts of what is going on in our world right now.

We are living through an extraordinary time. Words and images criss-crossing our social media feeds, television screens, and radio-waves, and, guiding almost every conversation we are having—revolves around the term, COVID-19.

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. This variant of a coronavirus is something we have not experienced since the likes of the Spanish Flu that circled our globe in 1918.

In Saskatchewan. In Canada. Across the world. Whether you live in a remote northern village, town, a First Nation community, rural municipality, suburb or core neighbourhood within a small or big city—we are all in this together.

Our hearts go out to everyone. We are experiencing a shared reality that will bind us together as a connected generation forever.

As Registered Professional Planners, we are trained and committed to help engage, inform, and prepare communities in the best ways possible. We are grappling as a profession with big questions such as how best do we prepare with communities for a post COVID-19 future in terms of sustainability, livability and well-being?

This time will give us many learnings as we reflect on historic patterns and draw from rigorous scientific evidence and best and promising practices on planning and related theories, methods and tools. We will strive to model ways forward to help communities.

During this pandemic there are perhaps way more unknowns than knowns. AND YET, of the knowns we can assume this—whatever we do as humans going forward—we know evidentially our actions have the potential to affect everyone beneficially or otherwise. AND, we know that by listening and acting on evidence-based science, and drawing too from spiritual guidance we have within and around us—places us in a better way together in the future.

As your colleagues and professionals, we continue with our efforts to help communities and organizations prepare for the future. Our team is available to provide support as we all transition to a new normal.

We are helping out behind the scenes alongside communities to work on immediate responses—providing data, directories and sharing of informational resources. We are also finding ways to work through democratic engagement processes to build on plans and use online platforms and other methods to stay connected and engage with community members, technical folks, elected officials, and a whole array of individuals, organizations and groups, to achieve such. We are attuned to working with communities to prepare for the ripple effects of this era on generations to come. And, most importantly, we are here as friends, families and neighbours.

In addition to the many community planning and social research consulting services we provide, the following services, that may be beneficial in these extraordinary times, are also available:

• Emergency response planning;
• Development of comprehensive community directories;
• Project management;
• Grant writing for funding;
• Community triage assistance such as facilitating online discussions and engagement; and
• Mapping of essential services.

In our hearts, minds and spirits... At a distance we will become better together.

Your Prairie Wild Team

Welcome

Founded in 1995, Prairie Wild Consulting Co. is a comprehensive community and regional planning, development and community-based research firm based out of Saskatoon. Simply put – we strive to help prepare communities for the future. We have two key aspects to the work we do as an interdisciplinary team. First, we conduct applied research and develop participatory engagement tools to help communities in shaping their vision, objectives, policies and actions. Secondly, we develop technical tools and processes to help communities, regions and community-based clients strive to achieve their vision.  Members of our team require a strong background in comprehensive land-use planning, applied social research and environmental sciences, facilitation techniques, Geographical Information Systems (GIS), and project management in addition to numerous other applied skillsets.

Prairie Wild is known for delivering uniquely tailored planning solutions to governments and civil society. Grounded in the values of integrity, leadership, innovation and excellence, Prairie Wild and members of our company have received international, national and local recognition for our innovative community planning and engagement philosophy and approach.

We provide a number of community planning and social research consulting
services such as:

• Development of District Plans (DPs), Official Community Plans (OCPs),
  Local Area Plans (LAPs), Inter-Municipal Plans, and Multi-Ordinal
  Governance Plans including Third Party Organisations e.g.
  Biosphere Reserves, Special Planning Areas;

• Community Plan and Zoning Bylaw Implementation;

• Development of Strategic Plans and Comprehensive Land Use Management Planning Frameworks for Aboriginal communities;

• Development of Strategic Plans for local governments, community-based, regional and provincial-based organisations and agencies;

• Drafting of Zoning Bylaws;

• Development and facilitation of community engagement processes;

• Concept plan development;

• Drafting of Development reviews for local governments;

• Comprehensive Land use policy analysis review;

• Advisement to prospective Developers and residents in general about planning legislation;

• Comprehensive geo-spatial analysis including full mapping and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) services e.g. development of Future Land Use Maps, Zoning Maps, reference maps, Concept Plans;

• Adaptation planning - applied technical skill-set regarding Land and Infrastructure Resiliency Assessment related to flood mitigation and other climate extremes and natural constraints;

• Full complement of applied social research and analysis including literature reviews, environmental scans, social indicators and needs assessments utilizing a variety of mixed methods;

• Cultural mapping and Asset based mapping;

• Urban design/Place-making processes and techniques based on Project for Public Spaces principles and methodology;

• Conduction of various planning education workshops and presentations to various audiences e.g. School children, Councillors, Administrators, Agencies, Organizations, Industry representatives; and

• Training and implementation of various different facilitation and community engagement processes and techniques.

Clients include all orders of government, cooperatives, developers, small businesses and community based organizations requesting assistance in these areas. Services are available locally, nationally and internationally.