Good Neighbour Jesse Sudirgo

Sanctuary Toronto is at the forefront of street-level outreach in Toronto. Throughout the pandemic, they have faced incredible challenges, one of which is the dissolving and fragmented sense of community on the streets. With indoor spaces closed, subway benches roped off, park encampments destroyed, you wonder if the homeless have any spaces in which they could welcome you. Hospitality assumes that you have a space or a community to invite people into. And of course, they exist, but when the urgent and acute emergencies of street life dominate such a community, you don't have the extra space or margin to cultivate community. You got to stop the bleeding. You cut the chit-chat and get straight to the point and meet the need.
Given the aftermath and ongoing struggles of the pandemic, communities like Sanctuary Toronto are presented with limited options to sustain the primacy of community in their practice. When key community members are literally dying in high numbers before you, it's hard to keep up with the ideals of a relationship-driven ministry. This is the first part of an interview I had with Greg Paul, where we begin discussing the oscillation that occurs between being a community or an agency in this season of ministry.

If there's one thing I've learned from Conan O'Brien, it's how to lean into the absurdities of life, to embrace the moments of surprise and keep pace with where it may lead. In a climate that demands preplanned strategies and fully detailed scripts, I wonder whether we are more focused on training our young leaders to execute a set agenda rather than equipping them to discern. While it may be easier to give them a script to read, the craft of improvisation may prove to be the best way to navigate the exceptional margins of society. In a space filled with pain, chaos and excitement, templates may bring a semblance of order, but the intuition of discerning sojourners may go a lot further. In this episode, I end my 3 part conversation with the Director of Youth Unlimited GTA, Scott Moore, where we discuss the role discernment plays in the way we plan and execute programs in the community. We talk about what it means to incorporate the Spirit in our methods and strategies and how we might do this together as a collective entity. 

Please do check out the great work of Youth Unlimited GTA!  

What would you think is the single most important issue to tackle in this world? If you were given a blank canvas and asked to figure this question out, where would you begin? In this episode, we look at how economists approach this question and investigate alternative, more subjective methods to gather and analyze the experiences and data of how things are going in our programs and communities. Specifically, we look at the emerging phenomenon in the social sector to measure the transformation of participants and the community they seek to serve. How precise do we need to be when it comes to gauging human transformation?   

In this episode, I continue my conversation with Scott Moore, the Executive Director of Youth Unlimited GTA (YUGTA) and discuss his experience both developing and deconstructing a measurement tool that sought to gauge the level of transformation occurring within YUGTA's programs. This is the second of a three-part conversation I had with him. 

Feel free to check out the great work being done at Youth Unlimited GTA. https://www.yugta.ca/

When you look at job postings in the social sector, I think you'll notice an increased demand for those with some kind of specialization or credential. You rarely see postings that seek out a jack-of-all-trades. In this episode, I speak with Scott Moore, the Executive Director of Youth Unlimited Toronto, to get into the nuanced distinctions between specialists and generalists in the non-profit arena. One could say that we live in a day of specialists, people who provide a specific value add to the church or organization. In categorizing our programs and ministries, we need people who can fit nicely into those boxes to increase our impact on those targeted goals. But amidst this gradual shift, how do generalists find a place in this increasingly professionalized social sector? What gap is left when generalists are not valued as much as their specialized colleagues? How much should we factor in the person's calling and passion when it comes to community building? We obviously want someone to be qualified and trained, but how much specialization do we need when it comes to the social arena? And how much of the way we view specialization is dictated by a corporate and industrial worldview? This is the first of a three-part series with Scott where we delve into all sorts of organizational values that have guided his team throughout the years.
Please check out the great work of Youth Unlimited Toronto! 

Today's episode is about surplus. I feel like the Bible has a lot to say about storing things up for later. The Bible almost promotes this ‘eat now and don't worry about tomorrow’ kind of thinking, which sounds pretty irresponsible right? But what if actions, that only have impact for the moment, that don't have a multiplying effect, acts that no one sees, that no one catagloues for a newsletter, what if our acts of service was an ends to itself. These hidden acts occur regularly within the social sector, but what I’ve come to realize is that the acts that really get attention and reward are the ones that produce surplus, it's the acts of service that have a muliplying effect and create broader impact. And that completely makes sense in a capitalistic mindset. But what do you say to a community worker when they put in countless hours investing their time and labour into being present with a street youth who has been through unimaginable trauma. In a market-centred mindset, the cost-benefit analsysis doesn't add up. The outcomes don’t correspond to the investment. In our day, the expectation is to do more with less. Not to do seemingly less with more. But when you work in the margins, when you work with the exception to the rule, efficient strategies, ones where you try to do more with less don’t always pan out. In today’s episode, I continue my conversation with Dr. Agnes Thomas, the Director of Catholic Crosscultural Services. We discuss these questions further and seek a way forward that acknowledges the wide spectrum of actions that impact the people we serve. You can learn more about Catholic Crosscultural Services at https://www.cathcrosscultural.org/

Asset-Based Community Development is a powerful movement that has shifted the paradigm of so many attempting to work for social change. In reflecting upon my experiences in this framework, I realized the subtle ways the market and the vocabulary of capitalism infiltrate such beautiful values. In my conversation with Dr. Agnes Thomas, the Executive Director of Catholic Cross-Cultural Services, we work through these important questions to discover the discrete ways community development has been commodified to maximize impact in the social arena.