Sun Oct 28th: Toxic Charity

Our event starts at 11 am on the 2nd floor of the Koffler House (569 Spadina Avenue).  Come early for coffee and conversation at 10:30 am.

This week our featured speaker will be Steven Karst.  Inspired by Robert Lupton’s book “Toxic Charity” and other research, Steven has found that most people have faulty assumptions about the cause of poverty based on their own perceptions of need. This results in the use of strategies that do considerable harm to the people they are genuinely trying to help. Steven doesn’t fault the motivation of compassionate people wanting to help those in need, he’s been one of them. What he brings to light are the unintended consequences of rightly motivated efforts using examples from his experience working as a construction manager for a non-profit entity in countries likes Indonesia, El Salvador and Venezuela.

Steven is a life long construction professional who entered the industry at age 15, received construction training at George Brown College and was in a hurry to apply his skills, especially in non-profit work. He has worked in the trades and in management and now works in litigation as a construction claims consultant.

Our featured musician will be Emilyn Stam.  Emilyn is a Toronto-based fiddler, pianist and accordionist who creates, performs, records and teaches in folk, trad, and neo-trad styles from Europe and Canada.  She has 4 Canadian Folk Music Award Nominations, (The Shoeless, Eh?!, Lemon Bucket Orkestra) and 2 Juno Award Nominations (Lemon Bucket Orkestra). For more on our musical performer, please check out her website www.emilynstam.com. Emilyn with be performing with her partner John Williams.

To RSVP to this event please visit our Meetup page.