This year marks an important milestone for the  Community Builders Awards of Excellence program, Northern Life, the City of Greater Sudbury, and for myself.

Abbas Homayed Publisher Northern Life

With our CBA program this year, we celebrate five years of honouring individuals and organizations whose contributions are significant and meaningful to our city. CBA was launched with the intent of taking one evening each year to thank our community leaders who make our city great with acts of generosity, leadership, commitment and caring. The quality of the CBA alumni, its judges, sponsors, nominees and supporters paint a picture of an enterprising community that cares about its people and its future.

CBA was launched to celebrate the 30th anniversary of publishing Northern  Life. This year we launched new media initiatives to bring our community even closer together, and to take advantage of the power of instant communication.
Through our website, NorthernLife.ca, we keep the community informed of events through video feeds, stories, pictures and commentary. Our web statistics demonstrate NorthernLife.ca has become vitally important to residents and to ex-patriots who come to our website via two million visits monthly to keep abreast of local news.

SudburyToday, our e-newsletter, is the daily medium we use to keep you informed of events unfolding hour by hour. Breaking stories are delivered to your desktop mid-afternoon every day.

Sudbury24.ca, our newly launched video and picture-sharing site, is the medium we use to connect our community through the eyes of its residents. It’s fun, it’s informative, it’s entertaining, and it’s all about you. It’s a great way to mark our 35th year as your community newspaper.

This year also marks the 125th anniversary of Sudbury as a city, a time to reflect upon the generations of people who worked to build this community.

But, we cannot help but focus on the people we honour year after year through the CBA program. One day, they too, will be pioneers, whose contributions will be discussed by future generations and whose legacies will be documented through the CBA program.

And finally, I celebrate an anniversary of sorts myself this year because it marks a tipping point in my life. I have spent more than half my life as a resident of this city, and it has been one of the best decisions I ever made.

Thank you to our judges, sponsors, nominators, supporters, and especially to our staff, who have championed these awards over the past five years and whose contributions are as equally as important as those we honour.

Abbas Homayed