Our Approach

About Neighbourhood Houses

Neighbourhood Houses are place-based organizations driven by and for the local neighborhood. We create welcoming spaces where everyone can attend, participate, lead and learn through programs, services and community building. We are a second home to many — and often build relationships that last a lifetime.

If you drop by a Neighborhood House for coffee, you might just end up joining a community BBQ, joining a Spanish conversational and teaching a ukelele group. We create ‘pathways of participation’ that allow neighbors to engage in a broad range of initiatives – in fact, the average Neighborhood House attendee is involved in at least six different programs!

Neighborhood Houses place an emphasis on empowering community members to envision, design, deliver and adapt the services that they rely on. More than half of our participants volunteer in some capacity, and up to a quarter are involved in some aspect of program leadership. We seek out and celebrate the skills, talents and passions of our membership, and we encourage our community to offer their skills wherever possible.

And last but not least, Neighborhood Houses are for everyone. We walk with our neighbors through every chapter of life: from birth to a celebration of life, and from the best moment of your life to the hardest. We create programs for people of all ages and all backgrounds. We create dedicated space for folks to connect over shared experience, and inclusive spaces where we can build meaningful friendships with people that are different from us. Most of all, we create communities filled with people that can rely on each other.

Come on down to Gordon House, and see how you can get involved!

Commitment to Anti-Racism

ANHBC issued the following statement after the killing of George Floyd. The principles expressed in the statement are to guide our work into the future. 

ANHBC Neighbourhood Houses and Sasamat Outdoor Centre exist to strengthen neighbourhoods by bringing diverse people together to create positive change. Our work has always been centered around inclusion and equity,to build social connection and to break down discrimination through community building. There is hard work to be done across the globe including in our own backyard. It is not enough to be inclusive. We must be anti-racist, as well. We know we need to show up in more concrete and consistent ways to drive change to the systemic discrimination against Black, Indigenous, and racialized communities. We will use our position as neighbourhood builders to challenge systems and provide more resources and opportunities to racialized communities.We must push harder to contribute to a more just world.

 Our commitment is to do the following:

We commit to creating brave spaces for community members to come together to have real conversations about racism – at individual and systemic levels.

This will include distinct conversations about anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism, anti-Muslim racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Asian racism, and all other forms of xenophobia and discrimination. 

We commit to looking at ourselves as a large organization to understand how we have benefited from colonization, to examine when we have stood up and when we have remained silent, and to fully recognize the harm that our silence has caused.

We commit to holding ourselves accountable and looking at how the diverse communities we work with are reflected in management, senior leadership and Board Governance.

This is not about tokenism – it’s about creating real change in our own organizational systems. 

We commit to speaking out against injustice, while working to decolonize our practices.

The pain people are feeling right now is real. It is our responsibility to do our work with honesty, integrity, and dedication.Even when no one is watching.

Respect Policy

We expect everyone to be patient, polite, understanding, and to treat others with respect. We also expect everyone to treat Gordon Neighbourhood House’s space and other people’s belongings this way.

No matter what your race, gender, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, ability, religion, ancestry, political affiliation, language, financial status, age, record of offenses, immigration or family status, you will be respected here.

Every person is always welcome. But if behaviour compromises others, it will be the person’s behaviour that is asked to leave. The amount of time will reflect the seriousness of the incident and the number of times it has occurred.

The very same person will always be welcome when we can get beyond that behaviour.

Food Philosophy

Gordon Neighbourhood House uses food to nourish our community in a variety of ways, including the facilitation of intercultural exchange and dialogue, community capacity-building, and community development.

Principles:

  • Sn understanding that food brings us together and can act as vehicle for community-building.
  • A recognition that all members of our community should have a Right to Food, while also acknowledging that we as a community enjoy various levels of access to food.
  • A commitment to sharing fresh, non-expired, healthy, and locally-sourced food whenever possible.
  • A commitment to sharing food that is nutrient-dense, low in refined sugar and sodium, and not overly-processed.
  • A commitment to working toward increased access to food for those who are nutritionally vulnerable.
  • A commitment to providing opportunities for increased food literacy and community capacity-building for our neighbours.
  • A commitment to sharing foods that reflect the diversity of our community, city, country and world.
  • An awareness of the impact that our food choices have on the environment.
  • A commitment to the reduction of our organizational ecological footprint by minimizing packaging and ongoing composting.
  • Support for the development of urban farms and healthy food cooperatives.

Our Strategic Plan

Read our Fall 2020 Update