Background Since its foundation in 1982, the Working Centre has supported grass-roots, cooperative, self-directed, skill-based learning as an integral aspect of its service to the Kitchener-Waterloo community. From the start, the Working Centre has been a school where people gain competencies: in word-processing, resumé writing, job hunting, programming, computer repair, sewing, cooking, gardening, papermaking, retailing, construction, renovation, bicycle repair, and other crafts.

Links: Proposed Content for the Diploma in Local Democracy Certificates of Contribution to Community Development Application for Waterloo School for Community Development (pdf) Course Content (for students)

In the way it has pursued its educational mission, the Working Centre has also fostered distinct and invaluable social skills: how to teach, learn, and live in a respectful, reciprocal, democratic way. Hierarchical, top-down models of schoolwork, as of work in general, are avoided here in favour of more egalitarian models. Quality, productivity, job satisfaction, friendship and joy are achieved through mutual aid. Teachers and learners take turns talking and listening, showing one another how to do new things.

In keeping with the educational facet of its objectives, the Working Centre has been collaborating for two decades with area schools, colleges, and universities. Every year since 1991, the Working Centre has provided space and resources to the University of Waterloo for credit courses in community sociology. More than 500 UW undergraduates have done part of their coursework in the unpretentious, dialogic setting of the storefront on Queen Street.

A series of MSW students from Wilfrid Laurier University have done placements at the Working Centre. So have students from Conestoga College, Katimavik, and local high schools. Graduate students in social sciences at both UW and WLU, from recreation to planning to community psychology, have done participatory research here for theses and reports.

Commencing in September of 2005, the Working Centre will formalize its educational aspect in two ways. First, it will award the Certificate of Contribution to Community Development for participation in specific study-groups, workshops, and collaborative learning endeavours. Second, it will award the Diploma in Local Democracy for successful completion of an eight-month advanced program in the knowledge, experience, and skills that underlie the Working Centre’s approach to community development.

Diploma Curriculum

The program will consist of 16 two-hour sessions between September 2006 and April 2007, with the first class scheduled for Wednesday, September 27th. Candidates for the Diploma in Local Democracy will do assigned readings for each of these sessions, much as in a college or university course, and come to each session prepared to make well-informed and reasoned contributions to discussion.

In the course of the program, each Candidate will plan and write an essay on some aspect of local democracy in relation both to the assigned readings and to his or her own experience. The essay will be at least 3000 words in length, and of a quality suitable for publication in Good Work News or on the Working Centre’s website. Candidates will read and criticize one another’s essays, for the sake of improving them and helping one another learn.

Who Should Apply?

The Diploma program is intended for mature adults who are committed to serving democracy, practically and effectively, in Kitchener-Waterloo: for office-holders in our municipal governments; for people employed in public service as administrators, police officers, or front-line workers in social work, recreation, or development; for leaders of churches, service clubs, business organizations or unions, the media, the performing arts, elementary and high schools. This program is designed for active citizens in whatever line of paid or voluntary work, people with a keen sense of their community and commitment to improving it, the kind of people who read the opinion pages of local newspapers and are tempted to write letters to the editor.

Admission to the Diploma Program

Participants in this program will bring to it significant prior knowledge, experience, and skill in democratic community development. This is not an introductory course, but a capstone. Even so, a college diploma or university degree is not required, though most applicants will probably have completed some form of postsecondary schooling. Each application will be evaluated on its own merits, with attention to the following three areas:

1. Knowledge of the Kitchener-Waterloo community, its history, political structure, economic bases, cultural institutions, ethnic and religious composition, and so on.
2. At least five years’ experience in serving democracy, whether paid or voluntary, in the private or public sector.
3. Understanding of the philosophy and principles of democracy, whether gained through formal or informal study.

Application Procedure

The first step is to complete the basic Statement of Interest and send it by email or post to the Registrar’s Office at the Working Centre. The appropriate form may be downloaded from the Working Centre’s website (www.theworkingcentre.org); click on “Waterloo School for Community Development” and follow the links. Paper copies of the form may be obtained in person at 58 Queen St. South, or you may contact Kara by phone at (519) 743-1151 x119.

Statements of Interest will be assessed within six weeks. Applicants accepted for the program will then be designated Diploma Candidates, and will be promptly informed.

In June of 2005 and in each subsequent year, up to 25 men and women from the pool of Candidates will be invited to take part in the program, commencing the following September. Selection criteria include (1) when applications were received, the earlier ones being given priority; (2) the quality and strength of Statements of Interest; and (3) the need for a stimulating mix of backgrounds, occupations, and orientations in the class for a given year.

If there are more Candidates for the 2005-06 class than we have places for, the ones not accommodated in the first year automatically remain in the pool for subsequent years.

What does the Diploma mean?

The Diploma in Local Democracy amounts to certification of the holder’s knowledge, experience, and skill in furthering community development on democratic principles in Kitchener-Waterloo, and of successful completion of the eight-month program toward this end.

For some Candidates, earning the Diploma in Local Democracy may yield career advantages, as evidence of continuing education in a given line of work. Employers whose objectives include service to democracy in Kitchener-Waterloo can be expected to look favourably on employees who have met the requirements of this program.

For all Candidates, earning this Diploma signifies and demonstrates a personal commitment, a life goal, a component of identity. Like a university degree or a certificate in musical achievement, sport, or Bible study, the Diploma in Local Democracy derives much of its meaning and worth from what it says about the person who has earned it, whether this directly affects the person’s livelihood or not.

Working Centre’s Role

With over 20 years of experience practising community development in downtown Kitchener, The Working Centre has worked out a philosophy of experience, social analysis, judgment and action while it has been the recipient of national and local recognition which attest to a growing interest in the roots of this project.

• CMHC Affordable Housing Innovations Award - one of six recipients chosen from all of Canada for making a significant contribution through the 43 Queen project to improve housing affordability
• Citizen Bank Shared Interest Award - one of eight recipients chosen from nominations throughout Canada
• Kitchener Downtown Business Association named The Working Centre a Downtown Leader at its annual Sharing Our Successes event.
• Joe and Stephanie Mancini were recognized by the first Founding Fathers Humanitarian Award from the Catholic Family Counseling Centre and the first Fr. Norm Choate Distinquished Alumni Award from St. Jerome’s University.

Administration

The Waterloo School for Community Development is under the control of the Working Centre’s Board of Directors, whose members have demonstrated knowledge of and skills in local democracy in a variety of paid and unpaid contributions to community development:

Gord Crosby (President), former Olympic athlete, police officer, businessman;
Roman Dubinski (Secretary), English professor, organizer for shared academic governance;
Rita Levato , lawyer, community volunteer;
Arleen Macpherson , church and community worker, former coordinator of St. John’s Kitchen;
Margaret Motz , social worker, community volunteer and philanthropist;
Mitsuru Shimpo , anthropologist, applied researcher in aboriginal communities, volunteer.
Ken Westhues (Vice-President), sociologist, theorist of democracy;

More directly, the Diploma in Local Democracy program is being organized by a steering committee consisting of the following: Joe Mancini, co-founder and Director of the Working Centre; David Thomas, a lawyer and community developer on the Working Centre’s staff; Catherine Whippey, an MSW student serving her placement at the Working Centre;and a representative from the Working Centre board.

Why Waterloo?

Although its physical home is in Kitchener, the Working Centre has chosen the name Waterloo for its educational arm. This is out of respect for the name given in the early nineteenth century to our sister municipality as well as to our county, now a regional municipality. The name Waterloo was fresh in memory then, as the battlefield in Belgium where Napoleon met defeat. The name meant resistance to tyranny, determination to safeguard the pluralism, freedom, and human dignity for which the original Battle of Waterloo was fought.

This part of Ontario was not founded by imperial edict. Our community arose from the grassroots efforts of settlers finding their own way along the trail of the black walnut trees. The defining character of Waterloo Region is as a place of decentralized power, a place where ordinary people make history, free of despotism of any kind.

The Waterloo School of Community Development is rooted in these local, democratic traditions. It aims to maintain and deepen those traditions in the large, urban, diverse, high-tech setting the Region has become.

Tuition

There is no application fee, and no charge for assessment of the Statement of Interest submitted at the start. All-inclusive tuition for Candidates enrolled in the eight-month Diploma program is $400. Bursaries will be available for Candidates invited to enroll in the program for a given year, but unable to accept for financial reasons.