” A settlement is first of all a house, where the workers eat and sleep and meet their friends and neighbours. They do not swoop down upon the community from another sphere to change its ways; they are already on the ground, twenty-four hours in the day, seven days in the week, working out through the very heart of the neighbourhood. And thus it is that a settlement house is not a charity; it is not a case of one set of people giving something that another set receives, it is a pooling by all of us offering the best we know how to share. It is a living and a sharing of life. ”
The Story of St. Chrtistopher House was originally published in 1986 by the Toronto Association of Neighbourhood Services and was written by Patricia J. O’Connor.