River Forest will unveil a new online community calendar that merges events and activities from six taxing bodies later this month, said Jon Pape, assistant to the village administrator.
“Agencies will hopefully be able to avoid schedule conflict; it’ll be an easy place to reference what’s going on,” Pape said. “If somebody’s going on to look at the park district, they might come across another event that interests them.”
The calendar, which will live at RFHappenings.com, will include activities and events from the village of River Forest; District 90 schools; River Forest Township; River Forest Public Library; the Park District of River Forest; and Oak Park and River Forest High School District 200. The River Forest Collaboration Committee has been working on the project for about a year.
“The committee decided to issue a survey to all River Forest residents asking, ‘What things do you want communicated to you? What have you not heard from us?’ Interest in a community calendar received overwhelming support,” Pape said.
The committee decided to go for it. Last spring, the village hired the Chicago-based Webitects development firm, at a cost of $19,240 to create the calendar. About six months later, RFHappenings.com will soon be live.
Initially, the calendar will only include events from those six taxing bodies, although the committee is considering adding activities from Dominican University and Concordia University Chicago as well. To community members hoping to get their events posted on the site, Pape suggested they reach out to the organization most aligned with their activity — whether it be a community garden meeting at the park district or youth activity at the township — and ask the group to post it for them.
Nona Tepper
