What's better together than peanut butter and jelly, bacon and eggs, salt and pepper, or cookies and milk? The people of Weyburn, that's who.

The Better Together Project has recently caught on, in fact, here in Weyburn. The province-wide initiative is all about connecting people in the community, with anyone and everyone being encouraged to wear their 'Better Together' t-shirts on Tuesdays, so as to create connections with each other.

The t-shirts come in one of the four aforementioned pairs of food items, which are indeed better together. However, Weyburn's Laura Eddy, the local coordinator, said they're about so much more than food.

"Those shirts also let people know that we are part of a community and we are here for one another. Those shirts are also kind of like a beacon that say, "I'm here for you"," she shared.

Eddy said the t-shirts give people in any community the opportunity to share their willingness to chat and even make a new friend.

They enable to wearers to signal their interest in a community, and to encourage connection for the sake of everyone's mental health.

With the intention of creating a community within a community, Eddy also noted that, with the limitations on gatherings, they're hoping to do some virtual events for the time being.

"Weyburn is always so supportive. I'm very optimistic this is going to take off, and that a year from now we'll hopefully be hosting events that aren't virtual and, in fact, bringing together people who may not otherwise have had an opportunnity to meet," Eddy commented.

The Better Together initiative began in the Battlefords, and the community has observed very positive outcomes including mutual understanding, improved feelings of well-being, decreased loneliness, and increased satisfaction from sharing knowledge and experience.

"When you see those shirts on so many people when you're walking down the street or you walk into a business, it's much more powerful of a message when it's seen as not just the odd person on the street," Eddy said.

"My hope is to have everybody in Weyburn, but it's just a more powerful message, so I've stuck with what they've done in Tisdale, which is to wear the shirts on Tuesdays, so that the message will be so much more powerful being seen that way."

 

Eddy noted the shirts are true to size, and are available for order now. And while they're not a fundraiser, they're still pretty cute. To order, contact Laura Eddy at (306) 861-5531 or bettertogetherweyburn@gmail.com.