Our mission remains to make access to transportation affordable and serve as a learning and community hub across downtown Kitchener. As an Enterprise Tool project of The Working Centre, people come in to learn and share knowledge on bike repair and maintenance, gain access to tools and hang out in a supportive and fun environment.
This June, elementary students had a blast learning how to ride with confidence in the Cycling Smarts program, delivered by a team of instructors from Recycle Cycles. The pilot project is a partnership between the City of Waterloo, the Waterloo Region District School Board, Waterloo Catholic District School Board, Student Transportation Services of Waterloo Region, and The Working Centre, and is designed to empower students with new skills and knowledge on the road.
For over 20 years The Working Centre has been hosting Community Enterprise projects like Queen Street Commons Café, Recycle Cycles, Worth a Second Look Housewares and Furniture, and Computer Recycling to name a few. Community Enterprise projects are practical and productive examples of enterprise. They are active and working businesses that also focus on building community and inclusion.
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.
