Remarks by Joe Mancini at the 36th Mayors’ Dinner
Published June 2025
There are so many people who are here tonight who contribute to The Working Centre. It is overwhelming to think about the deep generosity that has helped sustain TWC’s village of community supports.
This winter, the tables at St. John’s Kitchen were full as people huddled in the warmth away from the freezing outdoor temperatures. SJK is a haven, serving over 400 meals a day, providing a place of rest, supporting people through heated outbursts and paranoia while the drug crisis rages on. The work of the daily meal is also providing care to those who are most left out and all who come to this daily hub of support.
This fall, 2371 people were counted as homeless. 1000 of that group were unsheltered. What does it mean when on any one day in the Region there are 1000 people shelter-less. Imagine 1000 people who are crashing in other people’s apartments, sleeping behind churches and other public spaces, setting up in parks, building encampments in forested areas, opening an unlocked door to find warmth, putting down cardboard in a doorway.
What can an outreach worker offer to someone in a tent, who is frustrated and angry? People living outside have few options. They are nervous, scattered, sleepless, relentlessly dealing with daily survival.
Outreach workers visiting encampments and congregate settings are encountering a growing number of MRSA infections which are antibiotic resistant. These infections, which are a major concern of hospital environments, are now found in homeless encampments and among those who are unsheltered. Wounds and infections won’t heal without a roof over their head.
We have learned much through six daunting years of creating shelter projects. We have acted into the desperation, because we walk with it every day. We have not stood against, we have acted in, acted against hopelessness.
The main burdens that we see among those unsheltered is despair which is an utter lack of hope. We also see trauma which is the carrying of woundedness and brokenness.
We have seen the shelter projects address the despair, as people support one another in community and we have watched lives transform in front of us. Literally hundreds who have found housing, but more important, some grasp of hope. A sense that someone cares.
This is the vision that is essential to 97 Victoria Making Home.
Making Home will add 44 units of supportive housing for those who have experienced long-term homelessness. Well-being grows through a culture of belonging that includes mental health and addiction supports, but so much more.
44 people will find a home nestled in a hub of services. Our goal is to build a person-centred approach creating engagement that shapes hope.
These are uncertain times. We see institutions withdrawing from people. This is not a time to lock doors, but to open them up, it is a time for the virtues of humility, dialogue, and discernment. A call to come out of ourselves, a call to reach out to the peripheries.
Pope Francis calls on churches and society to think like a field hospital, accepting and bandaging up those who have been left on the outside without resources. Can we strengthen the habits and virtues of community?
Who is my neighbour? The Working Centre is like a village, building community through listening and responding on the ground, cultivating wider social bonds, expanding the boundaries of our village.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of St. John’s Kitchen continuously serving a weekday meal in downtown Kitchener. Thank you to St. John’s church. The ritual of St. John’s Kitchen is that it brings community together. It starts with the preparation of the meal, an act of caring that involves so many, ensuring the 700 meals are prepared each day. The ritual is rooted in radical inclusion accepting each visitor, offering hospitality that welcomes the other, living the reality of our interconnectedness. It is the preparation and the generosity that makes the sharing of the meal a communion, a time when all are welcome.
The Working Centre is a village of supports organized under 4 main pillars – Work and Livelihood, St. John’s Kitchen and Outreach, Housing and Shelter, Community Tools and Enterprise. Thousands of people find help looking for work or completing income tax returns or problem-solving financial issues; 120 people live in our housing including refugees and those moving past homelessness, shelter projects teach us about simplicity and living communally. Our social enterprises fix and repair bikes, recycle and reuse thousands of houseware and furniture items, create welcoming café spaces, and refurbish and repair computers. Over 400 volunteers contribute to this community of service and hope.
The Working Centre builds community spaces where people join together to support one another through hardships, traumas and joys. In all of our spaces people gather together, contribute to the work being done, and become community together. This is the neighbourhood work that is crucial for our times.
