By Stephanie Mancini
Published March 2025
This year’s Mayors’ Dinner theme, Knowing Our Neighbour, is about the positive social connections that engender dialogue and reciprocity. We all know the importance of neighbours. Can we become neighbourly people in the widest sense, can we strive to find positive ways to build community?
The Dinner this year comes at a time when there is a discouragement for the divides that we see around us. Neighbourliness, the ability of people and groups to talk to each other, help each other out and learn from each other is a pathway to building community.
A quote by Mother Teresa states a simple principle that unlocks a perspective on why neighbourliness is indispensable. “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” This surprising quote does not locate the problem in the other, but in society’s ability to acknowledge the other, to teach that we truly belong to each other.
Baratunde Thurston turns the idea of citizenship into a verb, something we actively do as we work to create a vision of a community where we can all thrive together. He emphasizes four pillars for doing this. First, show up and participate. Second, invest in relationships with others, recognizing that we need each other. Third, recognize that even when we feel powerless, we do have power to impact the world around us. And fourth, work on behalf of the many, remembering that a stranger is only a person we do not yet know.
As we contemplate these kind of messages, we also recognize that we as a community are already doing many creative and positive things – how do we amplify and celebrate these moments as examples we can all lean in to. How do we change our narrative from despair to the positive nurturing of neighbourliness?
This year’s Mayors’ Dinner will focus on telling positive stories about how building social connections are at the heart of community; how active citizens can cultivate constructive relationships that enhance community. We want to celebrate how in Waterloo Region we have a rich tradition of welcome and connectedness.
The evening will focus on three presentations. The first will be Fauzia Mazhar who came to Canada twenty-two years ago. She quickly worked to learn the Canadian culture and to use her considerable leadership skills to work with and on behalf of culturally and economically diverse communities in K-W. Her work experience includes managing a neighbourhood-based community centre and a large-size service hub, as well as leading community collaborations and social change initiatives. She has served as the President of Pakistan Canada Association, Council Member and Chair of the Belong Group for Immigration Partnership Waterloo Region and as a member of the Board of Directors of Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery.
In 2010, Fauzia joined with a handful of women to support Muslim women to be leaders and change makers, able to address stereotypes and misconceptions about Muslim women through community outreach and bridge-building. The initiative became the Coalition of Muslim Women of Kitchener-Waterloo. Fauzia has provided consistent leadership to CMW since its inception, overseeing strategic planning and all aspects of developing a non-profit social service organization. Fauzia will share her insights into bringing people and groups together to build a welcoming, inclusive, and safe community.
John Lougheed is a retired Minister and Chaplain who has called Waterloo Region home for 27 years, so far. He is also partial to ‘God’s Country’ in Bruce and Grey Counties! He works part-time at Erb & Good Family Funeral Home, and volunteers with The Working Centre, The House of Friendship, and Supportive Housing Advocacy Waterloo Region.
John is a long-time friend of The Working Centre and our outreach work. He can effortlessly see beauty and inclusion in small actions and often reflects back the actions he witnesses, helping others to see the importance of sustaining a village of care. John has a unique eye that sees and celebrates this care and compassion through small, persistent acts of kindness. His stories of deliberate action at The Mayors’ Dinner will offer a powerful lens on the importance of neighbourliness.
We will also feature The Working Centre’s Making Home project at 97 Victoria, as construction of this new hub moves to completion. Making Home will provide a full campus of possibilities from housing to medical clinic assistance to daily outreach supports. We will celebrate the many donors to this project and the team that has brought it to fruition.
Neighbourliness is all about stepping outside of ourselves and learning and seeing the other, in so many vivid and changing circumstances. This is where hearts are opened.
This year’s Mayors’ Dinner will explore Knowing Our Neighbour in ever more creative ways, helping each of us to see our place in sustaining the community of Waterloo Region.
