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.
This year, the Mayors’ Dinner helps us to reflect on the importance of determined hopefulness in the face of despair. Determined hopefulness is not a gentle wish for the future, it is an intentional act to choose the kind of world that we want to live in. It will take courage and it will take care. Looking at the world around us, the need for courage is clear.
Throughout the winter our focus was on safe and warm shelter spaces. We are now able to provide 100 beds at the King St. Emergency Shelter and 80 beds at University Ave (UA) residence. Both locations include a food servery, washrooms, showers, laundry, primary healthcare, and housing supports.
On April 15th, after a three year hiatus, we celebrated the 34th Mayors’ Dinner in person in Marshall Hall at Bingemans. With over 800 guests, the room was full and decorated to feel like home with warm furniture, bookshelves and subtle lights.
It was heartening to see so many longtime supporters of The Mayors’ Dinner come out to participate in this meaningful community event that highlighted the creative, grassroots efforts to addressing homelessness.
The Erbs Road Shelter was built by The Region of Waterloo on regionally owned land at 1003 Erbs Road. The idea of building an outdoor shelter started in the summer of 2022. The Region contracted with Now Housing in late December to start production of the cabins made out of shipping containers. The Working Centre only came on site when the occupancy permit was granted in the last week of April 2023. The 50 cabins offer private, safe, secure and inclusive accommodation.
The Working Centre has been walking with the reality of homelessness for a long time, as the contours have been developing since the 1980s. Over the years there have been times when the issues causing homelessness are lessening, but they never fail to begin to rise again. It was only in 2014 when it seemed that homelessness was declining. There was hope that 100 units of social housing would make a decisive difference. By 2019, The Working Centre was counting more than 250 people outside the shelter system who were without housing just around downtown Kitchener. That number now exceeds 1,100 people in the shelter system or experiencing homelessness in the Region.
This winter we were saddened by the death of Sally Lerner, a long time professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Waterloo. In the early 1980’s she helped form The Working Centre’s ideas on how to respond to growing unemployment. She had an active presence, engaging the community to critically think about the meaning of work. Sally was known for her ability to facilitate students to choose their own educational adventure. Many of her students found their way to The Working Centre and enriched our work.
As we head into winter, it is amazing to reflect on where we all were this time last year! We have closed, transformed, built, renovated, re-imagined, held, re-held, opened and re-opened time and time again – all within this Working Centre ecosystem.
Students participating in the Community Engagement Option are once again being welcomed into Downtown Kitchener. This immersive and cross-disciplinary educational journey is delivered jointly by The Working Centre and Laurier, and brings a diverse range of community voices into the classroom. The option, now in its 8th year, continues to offer students insights into key community concepts like social inclusion, local democracy, and community enterprise.
We want to thank all the volunteers, donors, and community partners who have supported our efforts to produce and distribute over 600 meals each day during the pandemic. Thank you to all those sharing the spirit of community through these challenging times especially the 2500 people and groups who donated over Christmas season. Here is a summary of the work we have accomplished.
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.
