You may know Simple Living by other names such as Sustainable Living or Voluntary Simplicity. It encompasses a wide range of interests including personal finances, community building, the environment and social justice.
Hospitality is an intercultural and ancient tradition whereby strangers are offered food, shelter and sometimes work. The word hospitality has its roots in the Greek word `Xenos’, which means stranger and is also the root of the word xenophobia. Xenos then can mean fear of stranger or love of stranger.
Last Thursday was a particularly busy night at 43 Queen. We had four things happening at once! The Front Window was open, Recycle Cycles was having a potluck, an environmental group was meeting, and so was the Living Simply on Less group.
Chief Seattle is said to have remarked that “Man did not weave the web of life, his is only a strand in it.” I like to think of myself within this web, with strands stretching far into the past to the beginning of life on earth, other strands stretching far into the future, and still more strands connecting me to my earth and the people around me now.
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.
