The power of social media is being put to effective use in North Nechako.
About three years ago, Toombs Drive resident Liz Haley launched North Nechako Neighbours on Facebook because she wanted to know where the bears are but has since seen her creation expand to provide households with much more.
Haley has also seen it blossom from the 35-40 members she drew at the outset when she put up a notice at a set of neighbourhood mailboxes near her home to 600 as of Monday.
“I thought that if you’re worried about something, you can bet that there are 50 people worried about the same thing, and I knew that I wasn’t the only one caring about where the bears were,” she said.
Along with alerts about roaming bruins, the page has become a venue for notifying neighbours about such things as lost dogs and power outages and organizing neighbourhood cleanup efforts.
Reporting suspicious activity is also a major use.
At first, she pretty much allowed anyone living along the north side of the river to join but had to draw a line when, about midway through 2016, Haley pursued the idea of also using the page as an online neighbourhood watch group.
When she went to Linda Parker, Prince George RCMP’s community policing coordinator, she was told the area the page covered was too large.
“She said the North Meadows, the Edgewood, that’s too many, it’s too big, you can’t handle that many people as a neighbourhood watch group,” Haley said.
With that in mind, Haley chose to limit membership for North Nechako Neighbourhood Watch to households located from Rosia Road west all the way to the end of North Nechako Road while North Nechako Neigbhours remains open to everyone living along or near North Nechako Road.
“We are a group within a group,” Haley said.
She’s also had to draw the line on who can be members of the larger group.
“We now have people from the Hart saying ‘Can we join? We live in the north too,’” Haley said. “And I’m like, ‘You know what, I will help you start up your own group, but no.’ I have to draw the line, I am way overextended.”
That said, Haley is willing to provide advice to anyone interested in starting up a page for their own neighbourhoods. A key, she said, is to verify that prospective members are indeed living in the neighbourhood by providing full names and specific addresses.
Haley has also developed a decal that has been applied to Block Watch area signs notifying visitors that not only do homeowners in the area report all suspicious activity but they are connected via social media and that many of the households have security cameras.
It impressed Parker enough to ask Haley if the decal can be used on all Block Watch signs in Prince George not just along North Nechako. Of course, Haley said yes.
“It has become a citywide thing, which I am thrilled about because there are many online Block Watch groups now,” Haley said.
Those seeking more information on how to get an online Block Watch group launched are welcome to get advice from Haley by going through Parker, who can be reached at 250-561-3366.
