Remarks by Joe Mancini at the 36th Mayors’ Dinner: 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.
Pope Francis calls the beatitudes the path to joy and true happiness for all humanity. What is the work of shelter – it is walking with those who are left out, it is the call to be merciful, it is mourning those who die, it is seeking right action for those dispossessed. During these last five years, The Working Centre has walked with thousands dealing with homelessness, many of whom are caught in the concurrent cycle of mental health and addictions.
Sometime in early January, local news ran a story on the impacts of sub-zero temperatures for homeless citizens in Waterloo Region. The shelters were beyond capacity, people were being sent to motels during frigid nights. Since the end of December there had been many bitterly cold nights.
It seems as if the world is calling, in clearer and clearer language, on the need to build peaceful neighbourhoods, to welcome the stranger and to reduce the intensity of our carbon economy. It doesn’t take much to read the signs of the times these days as they intensely flash on every media outlet.
By Jim Lotz Published in September 2009 “He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars.
With the fiery passion one typically associates with youth, environmentalist David Suzuki, stood before a rapt audience on a cold January night and delivered his message. The strong words were nothing new, but what was striking was Suzuki’s continued enthusiastic hope. Hope, he said, is an essential ingredient to this work. Without sustainable activism we will not break the cycle of consumption that has become a way of life in the western world. People need to be “lifers” in their pursuit to save our sacred Earth. Giving up is just not an option.
Mid-May was a big week for Personalism in Kitchener-Waterloo. The Record ran a feature story that included a two paragraph description of personalism as a run up to the St. Jerome’s University Conference on the Hidden Pierre Trudeau—his spirituality, his faith, his life, his times. Later in the week, a copy of the latest edition of the Catholic Worker from New York arrived. It featured a letter on the front page, written in 1938 by Peter Maurin, co-founder of the Catholic Worker, who concluded with the resolve to “continue to recruit members for the Unpopular Front for Personalist Democracy.”
Hawaii. Land of magic. A place where dreams are built and lives bounce to the daily tune of Rainbow Radio. It is a land of beauty and harsh realities, rich in history and culture, and I don’t mean the glorification of Captain Cook (the first westerner to invade Hawaii), although he is part of Hawaii’s history.
The ecological discourse on planet earth, global hunger, threats to life, urges us to look down at the soil, humbly. We stand on soil, not on earth. From soil we come, and to the soil we bequeath our excrements and remains. And yet soil— its cultivation and our bondage to it— is remarkably absent from those things clarified in our western tradition.
If you have been following the Good Work News for the past few years, you will already be aware of the controversy surrounding plans from the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO) to construct a brand new expressway between Kitchener and Guelph.
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.
