Quality of Island Life Cooperative

What are Community Accounts? Community Accounts are innovative, user-friendly information systems providing reliable statistics on social, economic and environmental matters. Community Accounts Data are organized into a system of accounts that allows users to find relationships between the data sets. For example, is local water quality correlated with health, or how are education levels connected to economic indicators? These relationships illustrate levels of well-being more powerfully than isolated data sets. When data is formulated in a more meaningful way, information emerges and knowledge is created. This knowledge can be used along with personal experiences and beliefs to build a better understanding of a community or region. This allows for informed decision-making in the public and private sector and at all levels, from small municipalities to urban centres.

Community Accounts Pilot Projects in PEI

The possibility of developing a community accounts project for PEI was raised at the 2005 Annual meeting of the PEI Quality of Island Life Co-op. Since then, interest has increased and there are now two communities wanting to participate in a PEI version of community accounts. One is a cluster of communities in Prince County, including Bideford, Tyne Valley, Lennox Island and Lot 11. An informal group of community leaders has already acknowledged the value of community accounts for planning purposes in this area. The other is a watershed area in Queens County, managed by the Trout River Environmental Committee (TREC). TREC has been very active in watershed management as a fundamental activity to improve environmental, social and economic outcomes in the geographical area.