LISTENING is key in the building of relationships. This is something that KAIROS has done well with its international partners. We, as women and men religious of CRC are most grateful for the Justice work of KAIROS internationally and in Canada. As KAIROS prepares to send some excellent representatives to COP 27 in Egypt Nov. 8 – 18, we support the environmental endeavours of these international representatives with our prayers and financial support.
KAIROS has been busy re-working the KBE (KAIROS Blanket Exercise) that it may continue to be used to change the colonial mindsets of Canadians and international corporations who continue to use extractivism of sacred Indigenous lands. Please consider sponsoring this educational endeavour and enlightening others by inviting KBE to use this educational tool in your area of our country.
KAIROS is also restructuring. The KAIROS Steering Committee has been working on this for the past year. This is the public statement that has just been released. Please note that Richard Renshaw CSC is the CRC representative on the new Working committee.
“As those who have walked along with us for many years know, KAIROS has a long and rich history of being a joint-venture ecumenical program administered by the United Church of Canada. Ten participating member denominations and religious organizations are involved in supporting the development and delivery of KAIROS’ shared work. The members came together more than twenty years ago to find ways to support justice work better and from that collaboration KAIROS was born. Since then it has been housed as a program of the United Church of Canada.
Now into our third decade, KAIROS Canada continues to evolve and grow—and with growth comes change! After more than 20 years of faithful action for social and ecological justice under the wing of the United Church of Canada (UCC), KAIROS Canada is taking the exciting step of restructuring to become a stand-alone organization with its own charitable status. We will remain a joint ecumenical venture supported by our member denominations and religious organizations but we are maturing and ready to take greater responsibility of our own administration.
The choice to take this path has been discerned in the collaborative spirit that helped call KAIROS into being twenty years ago. In consultation with each of the member denominations and organizations, KAIROS’ Steering Committee has struck a New KAIROS Working Group to guide this process. We are just at the beginning of the process, but the plan is for it to be complete by the end of 2024.
This is a significant change driven by our mutual commitment to KAIROS and the work KAIROS does. We are transforming and yet there is much that will stay steady throughout this change. Relationships and community have always been a significant part of who KAIROS is, and that will remain. We intend to deepen our work on reconciliation, which has long been a focus of KAIROS, as we move forward. We will continue to love God, creation and people and to live out our identity and call to “do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God” (Micah 6:8). And we commit to being an organization with the justice-seeking values and practices of equity, anti-racism, anti-oppression and decolonization. These values will shape our restructuring even as our commitment to deepening those values and practices continues shaping our work.
We are grateful that KAIROS is in a place now where it can embrace this opportunity for growth and we look forward to sharing more information as it becomes available. Stay tuned for updates!”
Sincerely,
The Steering Committee, KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives
Maura McGrath CND and Jeannette Filthaut SP
CRC Representatives for KAIROS