Research Catalog

Title

Transition to common work : building community at the Working Centre / Joseph Mancini and Stephanie Mancini.

Author

Mancini, Joseph, 1958-

Publication

Waterloo, Ontario : Wilfrid Laurier University Press, [2015]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

Mancini, Stephanie, 1959-

Description

xix, 212 pages; 23 cm

Summary

"The Working Centre in the downtown core of Kitchener, Ontario, is a widely recognized and successful model for community development. Begun from scratch in 1982, it is now a vast network of practical supports for the unemployed, the underemployed, the temporarily employed, and the homeless, populations that collectively constitute up to 30 percent of the labour market both locally and across North America. Transition to Common Work is the essential text about The Working Centre—its beginnings thirty years ago, the lessons learned, and the myriad ways in which its strategies and innovations can be adapted by those who share its goals. The Working Centre focuses on creating access-to-tools projects rather than administrative layers of bureaucracy. This book highlights the core philosophy behind the centre’s decentralized but integrated structure, which has contributed to the creation of affordable services. Underlying this approach are common-sense innovations such as thinking about virtues rather than values, developing community tools with a social enterprise approach, and implementing a radically equal salary policy. For social workers, activists, bureaucrats, and engaged citizens in third-sector organizations (NGOs, charities, not-for-profits, co-operatives), this practical and inspiring book provides a method for moving beyond the doldrums of “poverty relief” into the exciting world of community building."--Publisher's website.

Uniform Title

Project Muse UPCC books

Subject

• Community development > Waterloo (Regional municipality)
• Poor > Services for > Waterloo (Regional municipality)
• Social work with the unemployed > Waterloo (Regional municipality)
• Unemployed > Services for > Waterloo (Regional municipality)
• Working Centre (Kitchener, Ont.)

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references.

Additional Formats (note)

• Issued also in electronic format.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Part one: the Working Centre takes root -- Introduction: beyond us and them -- Building community: the Working Centre's roots -- Liberation from overdevelopment -- Part two: community engagement -- The Virtues -- St. John's Kitchen: redistribution through cooperation -- Searching for work at the Help Centre -- The nuts and bolts of an alternative organization -- Part three: toward a philosophy of work -- Ethical imagination: the Working Centre's approach to salaries -- Community tools -- Small is beautiful: re-embedding reciprocal relationships in daily work -- Conclusion: transition to common work -- Map of the Working Centre buildings and projects -- Map of the Working Centre locations in downtown Kitchener -- A thirty-year chronology of the Working Centre -- People of the Working Centre.

ISBN

• 9781771121606 (pbk.)
• 1771121602 (pbk.)

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library