2008/2009 Guest Speaker Series

Jim Lotz, author of The Lichen Factor: The Quest for Community Development in Canada, Lotz presents his people-centred community development ideas and experience
Wednesday April 22nd, 2009 at 7:30pm at St. John's Kitchen, 97 Victoria Street North, Kitchener

Jim Lotz is a freelance writer, teacher, consultant and independent researcher who has garnered wisdom watching and describing how community development, governments and individuals can work together to create better societies. His wisdom comes from 25 different jobs and volunteer assignments in community development. Jim, who lives in Halifax has been a friend of The Working Centre for almost 25 years and has provided ideas, guidance and support. His book, The Lichen Factor: The Quest for Community Development in Canada is highly recommended as an excellent guide to non bureaucratic practice. Jim will present his concept of community development and tell stories of effective community work.

Ken Westhues, Sociology Professor at the University of Waterloo
Wednesday May 13th, 2009 at 7:30pm at St. John's Kitchen, 97 Victoria Street North, Kitchener

Like people in most other countries, Canadians are divided into right and left. Those on the right want to enlarge the economic pie by encouraging technical innovation and competition in a market free of tampering by government. Like John McCain in the recent US election, they want everybody to get rich. Canadians on the left want government to take greater control of the economy, for the sake of a more equal division of the economic pie. Social justice is their watchword. In Part One of tonight’s presentation, we look at the Working Centre from a conservative, rightist point of view, as a charitable organization by which those who succeed in the market economy take pity on those who fail and lend them a helping hand.

In Part Two, we look at the Working Centre from a liberal, social democratic, leftist point of view, as a way of resisting oppression and combating the cruelties inherent in the capitalist system. In Part Three, we look at the Working Centre from the inside, and see the inadequacy of both rightist and leftist points of view for understanding it. We review the principles and values that have guided the Working Centre from the beginning, like its nonmaterialist conception of a human being, its cultivation of reciprocity in human relations, its higher priority on making economic pie (producerism) than on eating it (consumerism), and its preference for personal, small-scale initiatives over mega-projects, whether run by private corporations or by governments. We highlight the institutions (like the Catholic Worker and Hull House) and thinkers (like E. F. Schumacher, Christopher Lasch, Ivan Illich, and Wendell Berry) to whom the Working Centre looks for guidance. The aim of this evening is to gain as accurate and comprehensive an understanding as possible of what the Working Centre is, and of what gives it special importance in the current economic crisis.

Jutta Mason presents the story of Friends of Dufferin Grove Park
Wednesday, November 19th at 7:30pm at St. John's Kitchen, 97 Victoria Street North, Kitchener

For the past 15 years, Jutta Mason has led an informal community group called the Friends of Dufferin Grove Park in Toronto.

The goal of this group is to establish public space as a place where people in a neighbourhood can come to know each other, as little or as much as they want.

The group organizes community events (dance, theatre, stories, sports, music, markets, gardens etc.) in an organic and inclusive way. Jutta has described her job as removing barriers for individuals to contribute and give of themselves to the Friends of Dufferin Grove Park community.

This group has made a difference in the lives of many people, and offers a shining example of the spirit and potential of Local Democracy.

Gregory Baum, Professor Emeritus of Theological Ethics and Sociology of Religion at McGill University, presents Karl Polanyi and the Social Economy
Wednesday March 18th, 2009 at 7:30pm at St. John's Kitchen, 97 Victoria Street North, Kitchener

Gregory Baum’s work has helped define social justice work from a Christian perspective. A second edition of his seminal 1975 book, Religion and Alienation was republished by Novalis in 2006. Three of Baum’s books are relevant to the cultural and spiritual development of The Working Centre and include The Priority of Labour: Commentary on John Paul II’s ‘Laborem exercens,’ Paulist Press, 1982, Compassion and Solidarity: The Church for Others (The 1987 CBC Massey Lectures), Anansi Press, 1988, and Karl Polanyi on Ethics and Economics, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996. In 1990, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.