Recently, Finding Home facilitated a series of dialogues with Mandarin-speaking grandparents who are also caregivers during the day for their grandchildren. The dialogues were hosted by Kitsilano Neighbourhood House and funded by New Horizaons for Seniors Programs. During the dialogues the grandparents agreed that Mah-jong creates a sense of home for them. In China, they explained, everyone plays games together. If they could only have a place to play Mah-jong here in Canada, then they would finally feel at home. The dialogue series consisted of three ...... read more

Kitsilano Neighbourhood House(KNH) contracted Finding Home to build capacity within their staff through proving our Community Engagement and Asset Mapping training with the goal to deliver seniors and elders asset mapping workshops throughout the West Side of Vancouver and produce a resource guide. By engaging over 100 seniors and elders from diverse backgrounds, including Musqueam Elders and Newcomer seniors, this project produced the West Side Seniors & Elders Resource Guide. The launch of the guide brought together seniors and elders, seniors service providers ...... read more

The ways in which we respond to personal, community and global challenges are rapidly changing. Whether it is loss of language; a lack of affordable housing; displacement through war or flood; or fundamental institutional changes, many people from across cultures and sectors are yearning for belonging, connection and safety or a sense of home. We are certainly in a time of transition and change. Some conceptualize our current situation as being within humanity’s cyclical patterns. For example, Arnold Toynbee argued that, prior to the rise of a new era, violence increases and people tended to respond to stress, conflict, and change with less creativity and more rigidity. In addition, peo ...... read more

I was invited to give key the keynote address at Alberta’s provincial restorative justice conference “Fostering A Restorative Worldview.” As part of my preparation, I researched the origins of each “restorative” and “worldview.” I first drew from my research in Worldview Skills and started with the root of the word ‘worldview’ which comes from the German word “weltanschauung” and means “a comprehensive conception or image of the universe and humanity’s relationship to it.” This understanding of ...... read more

Today, seniors from Seniors Services Society shared stories about what creates a sense of home for them. One senior said, “home is where you live with the love of your life.” Another senior responded, “that may be so for you…I sure did not have a husband like that!” While experiences of home differed, all agreed “the smell of mom’s cooking creates a sense of home for all of us.” Frieda Hogg explained, “the worst thing about getting older isn’t that you lose your eyesight, it is that because of this loss of sight, you can’t read mom’s recipes.” As the dialogue series progressed, these seniors identifie ...... read more