OCAP, The Salvation Army, the government and people

I will be honest every tuesday I think about Ivan Illich.

The reason is on Tuesday nights we go on StreetWalks where an outreach worker with the Salvation Army tours us around downtown Toronto explaining social justice issue. One questions that is perpetually on my mind anyway, and even more so on tuesday nights as the youth ask similair questions, is how can non-professionals show love and hospitality to those who have severe addictions or are criminally cultured?

Coming from the perspective of Youth who on the most part, realistically, will never be trained to be professional addictions counselors and are much to young to do anything like activist work this question is potent. I will not go into details but the youth are really impacted by this walk. Yet at the same time no non-institutional way of grapling with the issues is presented which leads them with out really anything to do about the issues.