By Roger Gilbert
Published September 2025
Roger Gilbert has recently joined The Working Centre as the St. John’s Kitchen and Outreach Hub Lead, one of our new positions designed to sustain and support the main pillars of our integrated web of practical resources and creative responses.
I have worked for 25 years in many roles with agencies and services providing support to the community and particularly to those most vulnerable and marginalized. It was always a calling for me from an early age. Throughout those years I worked with so many wonderful people and had experiences and growth from the community I was present with. While the work was always well intentioned, there were systemic blockages which hindered truly aligned work. You could feel the blockages and the dissonance it created for individuals – a dissonance between your work-self and your true-self. I often felt that we were not able to be fully effective for the community we served. There are many reasons for this, but in summary, I often experienced how systems in place can limit how to do the most open hearted work that is needed in community. These blockages come in many forms and can repeatedly create tension for those working with community. There was always something that prevented workers from working fully aligned with their hearts fully open.
Over the years I had intersection points with The Working Centre – making connections with staff and volunteers, learning about services and going on tours to see the beautiful work happening in action. From St John’s Kitchen, to 58 Queen, to Recycle Cycles and all of the outreach services happening, the feelings always lingered with me and never really left. I realize now, more than ever, it was because I was experiencing a way of working that was aligned with who I was at my core and the kind of work I aspired to. I was learning that there was no way to experience work, other than with a fully open heart. It stayed with me. I found ways to stay connected over the years and eventually, as things often do when you’re open to it, I energetically found my way to The Working Centre as a more aligned way to be immersed in community full time.
We live in a time where things can and often do feel more dire than ever. From the opioid crisis, the COVID pandemic, the housing crisis, escalating food costs and our current geo-political climates – there is so much fear and scarcity to get sucked into. We can feel deflated and defeated, like there is no hope.
What I have found, seen and felt at The Working Centre is a sense of hope, a North Star for how we unite together as community to rise to meet these issues and feel truly connected. There is a web of open heart work happening here, one that has been cultivated for 40 years and is hard to put in words because it must be seen and felt to be understood. It is understood through holding space for connection and community building with staff, volunteers and community, all as equals, all with our unique journeys, gifts and things we carry with us through our experiences. It is daily connection and welcoming into community. It is holding space for someone to be truly seen and feel like they are valued and matter. It is allowing yourself to be vulnerable and grow through connections to others. It is allowing the work and energy to be driven by this connection – for the work to grow based on the need that emerges from these tragic gaps, not from trying to engineer programs and solutions that do not emerge from holding space in community.
I see this happening daily in every part of The Working Centre. It is a consistent invitation to bring your true full self to the work. You are welcomed with a community of familiar energy that your heart knows. It allows for infinite possibilities and hope that anything is possible to emerge. It also allows you to remember, amongst all the worries and fears about the future that we can over-consume, that the most important moment is always the interaction you are having in the moment. This is what matters, the connections you make and your heart being open and aligned. These connections and webs of energy grow exponentially and cannot be measured, they are felt and continue to connect us in ways that heal and propel us forward in a way I can only feel with hopeful excitement. You find here powerful stillness of presence and my only wish is that everyone will someday experience this.
