The Working Centre is a volunteer inspired venture that seeks to give access to tools and opportunities to build community

Building Community for Over 40 Years

The Working Centre was founded in May 1982 as a response to unemployment and poverty in downtown Kitchener. Over time our supports and resources have expanded into areas of housing, street outreach, healthcare, food, and community based enterprise projects.

Through the support and work of volunteers, donors, community partners, and dedicated staff, The Working Centre has been very fortunate to continue to operate as an alternative organization that provides concrete services to the community. We have done this while remaining true to our original vision of recognizing and celebrating the true dignity of the different kinds of work that makes a community.

Community Building Timeline
Saint John's Kitchen workers wearing dark shirts and orange aprons embrace with arms around each other
A woman wearing a light coloured winter jack and hat fists bumps a man wearing a blue jacket, a cap, and a facemask on his chin.

A Welcoming and Supportive Community

The Working Centre is embedded in a web of community that provides immeasurable benefits to the hundreds of people who participate in countless ways. It is a community where people pitch in, where friendships develop, where people help each other during good times and in crisis. The accumulation of all these efforts adds up to a lively community that combines helpfulness with people creating their own meaningful work.

People can access employment and housing resources, find good work opportunities, learn and develop skills, engage with our many community tools projects, feel welcome in our open community spaces, receive compassionate support, and share in a strong sense of belonging.

 

An Interconnected Community

Like neighbourhoods in a city, our projects are distinct yet connected through various programs, services, and people.

The Working Centre community includes 30+ projects, 150+ staff, 300+ volunteers, and 1500+ daily visitors at our many spaces.

People sit at tables eating and talking inside the colourful Queen Street Commons Cafe space.
A full crowd of people sit at tables talking inside the Fresh Ground space.

Open Public Spaces

Our places are marked by colourfulness, open concept design, and tidy functional work areas. Visitors see that each project is a beehive of people working actively together with an egalitarian spirit. It is difficult to tell who is a volunteer, who is staff, and who are the people using the service.

Visitors see public spaces that integrate social relationships with economic projects. Belonging, attachment, and meaningful relationships grow through service to others and inclusion in the gritty work of project development.

The Working Centre Virtues

All Working Centre projects are integrated through a common philosophical grounding in six virtues that guide our approach to working with community.

Work As Gift

People offering time, skill, and labour to make their community a better place

Serving Others

Engaging in personal action to support the common good

Rejecting Status

Recognizing that the work of each person is to be valued equally, and to put others before yourself

Living Simply

Choosing to live with less stuff, reducing the amount of clutter, and promoting locally produced goods and services

Building Community

Creating a diverse set of welcoming and inclusive common spaces that offer connection and compassion

Creating Community Tools

Striving to put productive tools into the hands of people, and developing culture around sharing and cooperation

A view of Queen Street South from King Street looking towards Charles Street. The Walper Hotel is a red brick building on the right.

Downtown Kitchener

The Working Centre is deeply rooted and interwoven into the culture of downtown Kitchener. This has allowed our supports to be centrally located and accessible.

As the city has grown, and the downtown been revitalized, The Working Centre has changed too – striving to serve the needs of a diverse population and adapting in response to new challenges facing those living in our community.

Our Locations

Working Centre projects are located at three primary locations in downtown Kitchener: Queen St. South, Victoria St. North, and Fresh Ground.

Queen St. South

Victoria St. North

Fresh Ground
Victoria St. North
Queen St. South
Fresh Ground

Continue tour to Queen St. South

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The Integrated Circle of Care is a fluid and collaborative approach followed by workers from different agencies weaving through St. John’s Kitchen. Within this approach, staff members from each agency are aware of their specific personal roles. However, the high level of collaboration between workers means that people can approach any worker, without knowing their agency association or specific role, and still receive support – either that worker will support the person directly, or they will introduce the person to another worker who can support the person more appropriately.

This approach makes relationships more natural and support more accessible. Workers from different agencies are easily approachable, meaning that people build relationships with multiple workers. Having relationships with different workers is important to a person’s support – it makes support from a trusted source easy to find, and means that people have a choice of worker to approach in any given situation.

In order to maintain a circle of care around a person, workers from different agencies ask for consent from the person for information to be shared between workers. Continuous communication between workers helps to ensure that people do not fall into gaps between services, and also that services are not duplicated.

Queen St. South

Victoria St. North

Fresh Ground
Victoria St. North
Queen St. South
Fresh Ground