St. John’s Kitchen – TWC Interactive

A Busy Christmas Season

Joe Mancini March 1, 2025

This Christmas season was a busy time. We received overflowing generosity as the community responded to ensure many meals were available through the Christmas season. During mid-December, Maurita’s Kitchen on Queen Street was extra busy as over 1000 pounds of turkey were cooked and prepared for serving. In the final days massive quantities of potatoes, vegetables and gravy were produced and made ready. Altogether about 800 Christmas meals were prepared and served at St. John’s Kitchen, King Street Shelter and the Erbs Road Shelter.

Construction Continues on the Making Home Project

The Working Centre March 1, 2025

Construction continues on the Making Home project. The third floor addition including the roof, windows, walls and blue skin are all completed. The framing for the units on the third floor is complete along with plumbing, electrical and HVAC rough ins. Drywall is the next step. When you drive by 97 Victoria you can see the new windows donated by Strassburger Windows. They were installed in late November before the cold weather took hold. The second floor is now at the framing stage with progress towards completing plumbing rough-in and the HVAC rough-in along the main hallway.

40 Years of St. John’s Kitchen

Joe Mancini December 1, 2024

In early January 2025, St. John’s Kitchen will mark 40 years of serving a daily weekday meal in downtown Kitchener. The journey to ensure that the door of St. John’s Kitchen is open each day to continually serve the daily meal and to be a place that people count on, is a major part of our 40 year story. It is also a story of a changing place, of responding to dramatic changes on the ground.

Change Over Time

Stephanie Mancini September 20, 2024

We are starting to get ready for the Point in Time (PiT) count, which is a national coordinated effort to take a snapshot of how many people are experiencing homelessness in one night. It is important to recognize the many ways that homelessness is increasing in our communities, especially for people just trying to cope as best they can. Encampments demonstrate that we no longer have an effective social structure response to homelessness.

Construction Update at 97 Victoria

Katherine Bitzer September 20, 2024

97 Victoria will focus on the combination of housing, health and community, supporting those most left out of services, and connecting people with mental health and addiction supports. We are excited that the building of the 44 new units of housing is well underway. Also exciting is that the foundation for the new St. John’s Kitchen building is set to begin in mid-September.

Breaking Ground at 97 Victoria for the Making Home Project

Katherine Bitzer September 30, 2023

On August 28, about 100 people gathered at 97 Victoria Street for the official groundbreaking ceremony for our Making Home project. The event was a celebration of the many partners who have come together to make this project possible: government, corporate and community donors and supporters, as well as design and construction partners.

St. John’s Kitchen Returning to St. John’s Anglican Church

Joe Mancini September 30, 2023

As St. John’s Kitchen prepares to return to St. John’s Anglican Church, it is fitting to reflect on our long journey together. For 21 years between January 1985 and July 2006 a continuous free weekday meal was served at lunchtime in St. John’s gym. During those years, every weekday between 100 – 200 people came through the church gym. The Working Centre had started using the St. John’s gymnasium two years earlier in January 1983 for the St. John’s Unemployed Workers Centre.

Serving Others at St. John’s Kitchen Garage

Megan Heck September 30, 2022

As a stay-at-home mom, Gwen Gerencser held several part-time jobs prior to St. John’s Kitchen (SJK), such as a bus driver for her children’s elementary school and a retail employee at The Beer Store. When her children began to get older, she started to look for an organization to volunteer with where her availability could be flexible, and SJK was the perfect fit.

Gwen describes volunteering at SJK as incredible, as she was able to cater her volunteer hours to her schedule, and the time she dedicated was met with immense gratitude. She wanted to provide help wherever needed, which is exactly what she did – through serving food to community members and washing dishes, a role that always needed more hands.

Making Home at St. John’s Kitchen

Joe Mancini June 27, 2022

By the winter of 2019, it was increasingly clear that growing homelessness was an overwhelming issue at St. John’s Kitchen. You could see it in the number of people sleeping on the floor of the Kitchen, desperate for simple places to lie down and get some rest. At the same time drug use in the washrooms was creating a new kind of chaos. Those without housing respond to dislocation by using increasingly powerful drugs.

It was at this time that David Gibson from Perimeter Development offered to bring together his longtime friend and architect, Joe Bogdan to help The Working Centre look closely at properties we owned or to consider other properties that could be used to build supportive housing. It was decided that the best option was to redesign the 97 Victoria N campus by rebuilding St. John’s Kitchen and adding 38 units of housing focused on those dealing with homelessness.

Shelter and Housing with Eyes Wide Open

Stephanie Mancini April 1, 2022

Every night this winter I have gone to sleep noticing the weather; thinking deeply of the growing number of people who are living without housing, living without shelter, alongside of those who are living without housing security.

The numbers of people make this reality palpable and urgent. The September 2021 Point in Time count documented 1085 people without access to housing. These numbers have names, and are people we see every day.

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