Toronto Job Opportunity – with West Neighbourhood House

We’re searching for a Community Engagement Leader to work within our partner organization, West Neighbourhood House, to reinvigorate the drop-in centre model. Your mission will be to create a safe & energizing space for staff, street-involved adults, and the community to build on its rich history and chart out a future way of doing and being.

Over the past seven months, InWithForward has been embedded within the Drop-in Centre, asking the question: what would it look like if drop-in centres functioned as trampolines with a robust safety net? Posing that question provoked real emotion and exposed different values about ends and means. Over the months to come, you’ll lead conversations about values and enable others to try out practices that bring to life a shared purpose. The aim is for the drop-in to solidly respond to the realities of poverty, marginalization, drug addiction, and mental health challenges – whilst also creatively connecting its members to learning and healing opportunities, building wider social networks, and engendering a sense of agency and control.

If you are ready for a challenge and have heaps of ingenuity, grit, and team spirit you won’t find a more compelling role in Toronto. This is a rare chance to innovate from the inside-out.

You also won’t be starting from scratch. You’ll be re-visiting the roots of the Settlement House Movement that brought us West Neighbourhood House. You’ll also have access to a trove of tested practices and tools compiled over the last many months by our team of designers, anthropologists, and filmmakers. These are practices like Curious Conversations, which draws on narrative therapy to help adults articulate their preferred developments. Your most important resource, however, will be the community in and around the Drop-in Centre. 

InWithForward will continue to provide coaching & support. Download the Job Description. Apply by September 12.