Driving through rural Ontario, it is not unusual to see signs with Christian messages surrounded by colourful leaves at this time of year. I was struck recently by one sign that read, “Harden not your heart”. As we were driving by this sign, we were also receiving updates from our shelter team that there were four overdoses happening at the same time.
In early January 2025, St. John’s Kitchen will mark 40 years of serving a daily weekday meal in downtown Kitchener. The journey to ensure that the door of St. John’s Kitchen is open each day to continually serve the daily meal and to be a place that people count on, is a major part of our 40 year story. It is also a story of a changing place, of responding to dramatic changes on the ground.
Dear Friends, this past year has been a year of movement and renewal. The structural steel beams creating a third floor for the 44 new housing units at 97 Victoria symbolizes the energy throughout The Working Centre, directed towards building and shifting spaces that make a difference in people’s lives.
Each year we witness many deaths within the St. John’s Kitchen community. Kelly, Zack and Cookie were three men who were long time contributors to the work of community. Their contributions go back 25 years each, as part of the Job Café, a term we use for our part time work force. Job Café has contributed in hundreds of ways to the Kitchener downtown.
This issue’s collection of books point in new directions. The Working Centre is bridging two gaps between a homelessness crisis and climate change. The depth of homelessness was made real by The Working Centre naming over 900 people who are homeless. Each day we see in the news scathing hot temperatures, swaths of forests burning and villages washed away by surging water.
All around us, we have seen higher levels of anger expressed in political and social environments. You see this in relation to politics, you see it in the eyes of enraged drivers, and we have seen it in our community as people reconcile the realities of more and more people experiencing homelessness and drug addiction, especially around shelters and spaces that support people most at risk.
We are starting to get ready for the Point in Time (PiT) count, which is a national coordinated effort to take a snapshot of how many people are experiencing homelessness in one night. It is important to recognize the many ways that homelessness is increasing in our communities, especially for people just trying to cope as best they can. Encampments demonstrate that we no longer have an effective social structure response to homelessness.
97 Victoria will focus on the combination of housing, health and community, supporting those most left out of services, and connecting people with mental health and addiction supports. We are excited that the building of the 44 new units of housing is well underway. Also exciting is that the foundation for the new St. John’s Kitchen building is set to begin in mid-September.
In our society we value kindness, and a person’s moral standing is often based on how socially aware they are. The problem that speaking to Brenda showed me is that sometimes we become dependent on other people for our moral value, and therefore, our self concept. The way our actions are perceived by others becomes more important than the actions themselves. In order to preserve our value and virtue, we objectify those around us. By being overly socially aware, polite for politeness’ sake, we use the people around us as ladder rungs towards moral superiority.
After considerable remediation work on the building at 256 King, we are ready to open our doors. We have intentionally crafted the space at Fresh Ground to be an oasis of brightness and calm, with close to 1,000 plants helping us to build fresh ground as a gathering place.
We are introducing a new menu that celebrates community, sustainability, and the joy of sharing meals. This menu will be available at Fresh Ground, in take home meals and catering options.
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.
