About

As Waterloo Region grows from 700,000 people to over a million in the next few decades, we need a vision of the future that is inclusive, resilient, and abundant. Non-profits and community groups already know what strengths we can nurture and what limitations we need to overcome to build a future where everyone thrives.

One Million Neighbours is a bottom-up vision for the future, built primarily over the course of 8 roundtable discussions in 2024 and 2025. These discussions took place throughout Waterloo Region, with participation from non-profits and community groups serving urban, suburban, and rural areas. We identified common priorities and built future scenarios based on the concept of multisolving: that is, finding solutions that solve multiple problems at the same time, while advancing equity.

Our discussions brought us to a wide-ranging vision organized around 15 themes: arts & culture, belonging, disability justice, education, environment, climate action, food, health, housing, Indigenous sovereignty, multiculturalism, organizational capacity, labour, public spaces, and transportation. These categories should be considered not as individual silos, but as overlapping lenses with more in common than first meets the eye.

We have developed a vision for the future led by non-profits and community groups. It is a necessary guiding star to help us counter the burnout that comes from responding to crises day after day. It also offers a different perspective that complements the vision statements developed by governments and by the business sector. By reminding ourselves of the big picture and forming new relationships in solidarity, we can recalibrate our energies. This report illustrates how different priorities can complement each other to achieve a common goal, and to build political will for solutions that have broad-based support from organizations who may not typically work together.

Contact

One Million Neighbours is a project of Hold The Line Waterloo Region. To contact Sam Nabi, our project coordinator, send an email to connect@holdthelinewr.org.

Funding and in-kind support

One Million Neighbours Waterloo Region is possible thanks to direct financial support from the Waterloo Region Community Foundation and Hold The Line Waterloo Region, as well as the support of our charitable fiscal partner, Pat The Dog Theatre Creation.

We are also grateful to the organizations who provided in-kind support in the form of venue space, food, and support staff to help facilitate our meetings: Kitchener Public Library, ArtsBuildOntario, Full Circle Foods, WLU Student Publications, City of Waterloo, Pat The Dog Theatre Creation, Civic Hub, City of Kitchener, Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener + Area (CAFKA), Inter Arts Matrix, Waterloo Region Community Foundation, Galt Collective, MT Space, First United Church, Willow River Centre, Langs, and rare Charitable Research Reserve.

Organizing team

Initial discussions about One Million Neighbours Waterloo Region were instrumental in advising on the scope of the project, and understanding where similar efforts were taking place in Waterloo Region. We also discussed the high-level context of what population growth could mean for non-profits, including the need to present a bottom-up vision for resilience, inclusion, and abundance. The organizing team met in-person and virtually in the first half of 2024, providing the Project Coordinator with a solid foundation from which to launch this project.

Organizing team members

  • Alex Glass
  • Craig Sloss
  • David Alton
  • Diane Wiles
  • Janice Jim
  • Julie Hall
  • Kathilee Porter
  • Levi Beaton
  • Lisa O’Connell
  • Mark Connolly
  • Mark Seasons
  • Melissa Bowman
  • Michael Druker
  • Ritika Shrimali
  • Rodney Chan
  • Sam Nabi (Project Coordinator)
  • Sean Campbell
  • Sean Geobey

Research team

Understanding that our community already possesses vast knowledge, and that the organizations working day-to-day to help their neighbours are the experts in how we should serve them better, our approach began with researching existing publications that could reveal the priorities of non-profits and community groups in Waterloo Region.

To that end, our research team identified public documents such as annual reports, impact reports, and press releases from hundreds of local organizations as a starting point for this report. This approach allowed the research team to include priorities from organizations that could not attend the roundtable sessions. They carefully identified the top priorities in these documents, and summarized them in a central spreadsheet.

The research team also collected information from Statistics Canada to understand the projected demographic shifts in age, immigration, and racial diversity as Waterloo Region is expected to grow.

The groundwork undertaken by the research team gave us a rich and layered starting point for our roundtable discussions. This approach meant that we were able to start identifying areas of overlap between different groups’ priorities, and that we could respect participants’ time by jumping into more complex discussion topics instead of asking them to continually re-introduce themselves.

We want to extend immense gratitude to the research team for doing the hard, tedious, and essential work of making sense of hundreds of publications from local organizations, and preparing an excellent basis for productive and collaborative roundtable discussions.

Research team members

  • Adam Cilevitz
  • Craig Sloss
  • Eva Hellreich
  • Justin Barca
  • Kae Elgie
  • Levi Beaton
  • Lynn Intini
  • Marta Berbés-Blázquez
  • Melissa Bowman
  • Neeraj Nachnani
  • Rebecca Petricevic
  • Sam Nabi
  • Zeyana Musthafa

Roundtable discussions

From October 2024 to March 2025, over 100 people from 62 different organizations participated in our roundtable discussions, which were held in Cambridge, Kitchener and Waterloo over the course of six months. Participants included organizations that are active in all three cities as well as the rural townships of Waterloo Region.

These discussions incorporated a multisolving approach: that is, finding solutions that solve multiple problems at the same time, while advancing equity. Recognizing that service providers are often pitted against each other by a scarcity mindset and limited funding, multisolving lets us reframe our thinking about the future. Instead of focusing on the limits within which we currently operate, we can imagine futures based on cooperation, mutual aid, and abundance.

Our roundtables intentionally brought together organizations from different focus areas, in order to break down silos and emphasize the interdependencies between them. It was an opportunity to build common understanding across various sectors that may not think of each other very much in their day-to-day activities. From art to healthcare, from newcomer settlement to local food, from green energy to housing, from labour to Indigenous sovereignty, and more, the sheer diversity represented by our participants is the core strength of One Million Neighbours.

We started each discussion by introducing the research summaries that had been completed by the research team, as well as summaries of previous roundtables. This constant feedback loop was an iterative process that helped us identify gaps, think about whose voices are not being represented, build knowledge, and go deeper with our vision for the future.

The guiding questions for each roundtable shifted slightly as we refined our process, but all the roundtables spent a significant amount of time answering these two questions:

  1. Describe a day in the life of a future resident in a community of one million people that is inclusive, resilient, and abundant. Start with one of the Vision Cards, and expand from there.
  2. How could we measure our progress toward this future? What measurable indicators could we track?

In addition to these two questions, we included other prompts depending on the session, such as:

  • What attracted you to move to your current neighbourhood? If you grew up there, why do you stay in this neighbourhood?
  • What do non-profits and community groups need in order to prepare themselves for the future we want?
  • List two or more priorities from the research summary that could be achieved together.
  • Of the priorities we’ve discussed, what are some co-benefits and what are some potential adverse side-effects?
  • What can we stop? What can we start? What can we continue?

Roundtable discussions: dates and locations

  • October 22, 2024
    Visitors Information Centre, Waterloo
    Hosted by Pat The Dog Theatre Creation
  • November 22, 2024
    Civic Hub, Kitchener
    Hosted by Social Development Centre of Waterloo Region
  • December 4, 2024
    Globe Studios, Kitchener
    Hosted by CAFKA (Contemporary Art Forum of Kitchener + Area)
  • December 9, 2024
    Galt Collective, Cambridge
    Hosted by Early Learning & Literacy Alliance (ELLA)
  • January 6, 2025
    First United Church, Waterloo
    Hosted by Strong Towns Waterloo Region
  • January 24, 2025
    Willow River Centre, Kitchener
    Hosted by O:se Kenhionhata:tie Land Back Camp
  • February 19, 2025
    Langs Main Site & Community Health Centre, Cambridge
    Hosted by Langs
  • March 27, 2025
    Lamb’s Inn Administrative Centre, Cambridge
    Hosted by rare Charitable Research Reserve

Participating organizations

  1. 519 Community Collective
  2. Adventure4Change
  3. African Women’s Alliance Waterloo Region
  4. Alison Neighbourhood Association
  5. Basic Income Waterloo Region
  6. Brilliant Labs
  7. Cambridge Family Early Years Centre
  8. Cambridge Food Bank
  9. Cambridge Public Library Art Gallery
  10. Citizens for Cambridge
  11. Coalition of Muslim Women Kitchener-Waterloo
  12. Conestoga Students Inc.
  13. Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener + Area (CAFKA)
  14. Dumbo Octopus Consulting
  15. Early Learning & Literacy Alliance (ELLA)
  16. Faith Climate Justice
  17. Fiddlesticks Community Centre
  18. Food Systems Roundtable Waterloo Region
  19. Grand River Artists Collective
  20. Grassroots Response to the Ukrainian Crisis
  21. Greenway Chaplin Community Centre
  22. Heart of the Region
  23. Hold The Line Waterloo Region
  24. Homer Watson House & Gallery
  25. Hospice Waterloo Region
  26. Inter Arts Matrix
  27. Kinbridge Community Association
  28. Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery
  29. KW Sport Facilities Committee
  30. Langs Community Health Centre
  31. Langs Shower Program
  32. Laurier Centre for Music in the Community
  33. Lightning Banjo Productions
  34. Live with SWAY
  35. Muslim Social Services
  36. Neruda Arts
  37. Pat The Dog Theatre Creation
  38. Pinch Arts Company Inc.
  39. Porchlight Counselling and Addictions Services
  40. Preston Heights Neighbourhood Association
  41. Puppets & Shadows Theatre
  42. Rad Riot Books
  43. rare Charitable Reserve
  44. Region of Waterloo Seniors’ Advisory Committee
  45. Sandhills Parlour
  46. Sanguen Health Centre
  47. Screaming Fox
  48. Silverheights Neighbourhood Association
  49. Social Development Centre Waterloo Region
  50. SPECTRUM: Waterloo Region’s Rainbow Community Space
  51. Stirling Mennonite Church
  52. Strong Towns Waterloo Region
  53. Sustainable Waterloo Region
  54. Union Sustainable Development
  55. Volunteer Waterloo Region
  56. Waterloo Region Age-Friendly Network
  57. Waterloo Region Climate Collaborative
  58. Waterloo Region Community Garden Network
  59. Waterloo Region Yes In My Backyard (WR YIMBY)
  60. Waterloo Wellington Self-Management Program
  61. Willow River Centre
  62. Women of Dignity International