St. Christopher House has always had two purposes.

Our first purpose is to support families and individuals in our community to address personal problems, and/or create opportunities for personal growth. 

Our second purpose is to help groups of people who are facing common problems to work with each other and with St. Christopher House to change laws, government programs, social attitudes and other external factors that contribute to the problems or limit the opportunities that people face in trying to make improvements to their life.

Community developments are collaborative, collective actions taken by local people to enhance the long-term social, economic, and environmental conditions of our community such that a better overall quality of life is created for everyone in the community.

What does Community Development look like at St. Christopher House?

Community Development at St. Christopher House happens in all our programs and across all our programs. 

In each of our programs the community at large and participants and clients are encouraged and supported to get involved in the life of the program.  Most programs have volunteer opportunities, advisory committees, community education and advocacy activities as well as regular planning and evaluation that provide the participants, their families and friends with a wide range of leadership opportunities.

The Community Issues that the House focus on are determined or reviewed annually.

Once a year staff and volunteers go door to door in our neighbourhoods to make sure that people know about St. Christopher House programs, services and volunteer opportunities and to find out from people what they like or don’t like about our neighbourhood and what would they do improve the neighbourhood attributes they feel are important.  

We call this our Community Sweep

(click on Community Sweep to learn more about them)