I was driving home from Sarnia yesterday, and because you lose my local station at about Mooretown, I was listening to a Sarnia radio station. One of the news reports was about a new website from Sarnia-Lambton economic development called http://ihatetraffic.ca/. Go take a look.

You will see that its aim is to persuade seniors to move out of the GTA to the relative peace and quiet of Lambton County. The advantage of this is, that you are gaining people who have a reasonable income, and will have capital to spare if they sell up in the GTA, and move to the South West.

Seems to me that this is something we could copy in C-K

There are many obvious advantages in persuading seniors to move closer to Chatham-Kent, however, it would be interesting to see if we could develop something similar that aims to recruit young professionals to the area.

If we could give them a reason to return home to Chatham once their college and university careers are complete, or even offer a program or service that allows them to use Chatham as a stepping stone from point A to B, youth retention would rise.

Though they may not have the high incomes and capital to spare such as the senior community does, they do have high level educations, training, fresh ideas, new perspectives and haven’t been out “into the real world” long enough to become cynical or jaded. Minds such as these are invaluable, especially when looking to build up an already ‘greying’ community.

Thanks for the share, Michael!

Both my parents and my in-laws are hooked on geocaching. They travel all over the place to attend geo-caching events, which leads them to spending some money in the communities that they visit. Definitely a good idea – I think London does a large geocaching event, might be worth trying to connect with their organizers to learn about their experience?

Bouncing to Caress’ comment – I think a big barrier to attracting young people to CK has to do with the dating scene (which is a weird comment, but stick with me). Most of the younger people that do move back here do so once they’re engaged or married – that’s how I ended up here. And I wouldn’t say that’s a bad thing at all, I think it’s a positive thing – young couples are drawn to the area because they see it as a safe place to start a family, etc.

But what about single young professionals? I’ve had this conversation with a couple of people and I can probably only name two single young professionals in the area – it seems like that entire demographic just doesn’t exist here. And I can sort of see why. There doesn’t seem to be a real scene for meeting other younger people in Chatham-Kent. London, Toronto, even Sarnia has a relatively active nightlife scene with a handful of bars. Just the other day my friends were talking about a 12 Bars of Christmas outing they were going on in Sarnia; I thought that would be a ton of fun to do in Chatham… if only we had 12 decent bars.

Let’s face it, when you’re 20 something one of your main life focuses is dating and meeting people. Often, it comes before finding a good job. And understandably, asking the municipality to invest in a nightclub scene is probably unrealistic, but it’s probably the biggest barrier to attracting young people here.

Chantielle makes a great point regarding the dating scene. Even for older single people – what are your choices? Bar hopping or join a church? I’m not knocking either per se, but really, a proper club with live music where you can drink both non alcoholic and alcoholic beverages and grab a decent bite would go over very well. Comfy seats and lets have some real room – not the elbow to elbow crowding. Hire a few professional people for crowd control and add a dance floor. I’m giving away my age, but when I was a young(er) person I used to meet up with friends of both genders at clubs in Chatham.
We have all kinds of dances for pre-teens and some for teens, but what happened to the places where people over 20 could go and “just hang.”
If we don’t cater to this particular demographic we will lose an important segment of society.
With the large empty buildings in town, I can’t see this as an expensive venture for anyone who has faith in this region.

In our case Amelia, we came here because we had family in the region, knowing we wanted to live somewhere between Sarnia and Windsor, and settling on C-K mainly because property was so inexpensive. Did you have family here?, because I would be fascinated to find someone without family and find how they decided on C-K.