Given that the golden rule of crisis communications is to act quickly and decisively, and to tell your story fully, we applaud the decision by the B.C. Government and City of Vancouver to pre-plan for what could have been the 2010 Olympic Games’ first crisis by opening “Connect,” an Olympic Information Centre in Vancouver’s troubled Downtown Eastside neighborhood, ground zero for the city’s homelessness, poverty and drug addiction problems.
Back when Vancouver was awarded the Games it was obvious that foreign media flooding into the city by the hundreds would have had an easy pre-Olympics story with jarring visuals (people shooting heroin just blocks from the main 2010 Games venues) – a story that wouldn’t necessarily explain the significant efforts that have gone into battling addiction and mental illness that plagues many neighborhood residents. Rather than force foreign media to search the bureaucracy for those programs, experts and facts (likely unsuccessfully) to balance the story, the new information centre allows journalists to drop in and be immediately connected with local people who are media trained and camera ready. It also allows Downtown Eastside residents to tell their own stories.
Some poverty activists have criticized the initiative as a “propaganda centre,” but criticisms about the Downtown Eastside in the face of Olympic spending were inevitable at the Vancouver Games. The question was always going to be whether governments would be able to get their message out. By proactively planning they have greatly improved their chances of doing do.
