Jul 21, 2025
A photo collage of the Café at New Song Church and the pantry, kitchen and office spaces at Feeding Windsor Essex.
(Sonja Popovski/St. Clair College)
"Collaboration is a powerful force that can drive innovation, enhance productivity and create meaningful change."
-Sonja Popovski
"People just want to be seen. That's it." That's how Rodger Fordham began. No preamble. No framing. Just the truth, plain and full of gravity. Dr. Karamjeet Dhillon, the Director of Research and Innovation at St. Clair College and Fordham, the executive director of Feeding Windsor Essex, were seated in a café, a modest space tucked inside a converted church in Ford City, the kind of place built more on presence than design.
He waved gently at the tables, the corners, the kettle, the chairs.
"You can't decompress in a coffee shop where strangers are twelve inches from your grief. People come here to breathe," he said.
Rodger leads Feeding Windsor-Essex, a faith-based, community-run operation that quietly feeds more than 220,000 people each year. He doesn't say this with fanfare, he says it like someone who's too busy to count, but too committed not to.
Research and Innovation at St. Clair College had its first meeting with Rodger virtually, introduced through WE-SPARK and deepened during the Think-Tank presentation recently attended by departmental Project Research Manager, David Potocek.
But the real connection happened in person. Walking through his space was not a tour—it was a grounding. What struck us was not just the scale of the work—but the care embedded in its smallest acts.
A chalkboard menu. A shelf of food for pets. A space to sit without being asked questions. Rodger shared the intention behind the café: "When you are in recovery, that first year is fragile. You still need somewhere to go. Somewhere to begin again."
This café is that place. Evolving the way they imagined, it became something else – hosting men's groups, fundraisers, community meals – a place that keeps pivoting because the need keeps changing.
What makes Feeding Windsor-Essex particularly unique is the Lunch Club—a dignified, structured food delivery service for residents in community housing.
"People pay $64 a month," Rodger explained. "They pick meals from a menu. They call in. It gets delivered to their door. We even have weekly specials."
But it's not just about logistics. It's about breaking cycles.
"Some people don't talk for weeks. They are stuck in loops—running the same painful story through their mind. But then they come out, sit in the room, hear people laughing. They don't join in at first… and then, one day, they do," he said, noting it's at that point, quietly: "That's when the healing starts."
He told Dr. Dhillon something one of the residents said to him: "We have been out more in this one month than in the last eight years we have lived here."
Rodger's ambitions are simple: do more with what they already have. His team delivers meals to buildings across the city, sometimes 20 at a time. But they get requests they can't fulfill.
"I get calls every day from PSWs and social workers asking if we can deliver to one individual. But we are not DoorDash—we don't have the capacity for that. But we could offer pick-up. They'd take it to their clients themselves," he said.
Even as he explains the limits, you can feel his mind moving—expanding the system thoughtfully, realistically.
For the team at Research and Innovation, this meeting affirmed what we have long believed: true innovation begins in proximity. Our emerging partnerships aren't only about funding—they are about witnessing what's already working and asking how we can walk alongside it.
Rodger's work intersects with nearly every school at the College. This is not theory. It's infrastructure. It's lived research.
Community as a Co-Author
At Research and Innovation, we are shifting our lens—from research on to research with. And this moment with Rodger reminded us why.
"You spend time together, and you realize—we're a lot more common than we are different," he said.
His team is currently supported by six unpaid hours for every one paid. That means behind every dollar is a mountain of donated time, love, and labour. That means this work doesn't wait for the next grant cycle. It happens anyway. And it deserves to be sustained.
Rodger recently received the King Charles III Coronation Medal, a recognition he didn't expect.
"I leaned over to Pastor Kevin and said, 'I think I read the email wrong.' Everyone else had all these awards and degrees… I thought maybe I was just the guy filling in if someone else got hit by a car," he joked with a chuckle, before his voice softens.
"Still, it was nice. It showed the volunteers that what we do matters."
At St. Clair College, we are responding to this moment with intentionality. We are developing a community-academic pilot model rooted in student-led research, aligned with outcomes, and informed directly by real community needs.
Through this approach, we are bringing forward grant opportunities that reflect what we heard on the ground: the need for meal system automation; the desire to expand the Lunch Club; the creation of hybrid delivery and pick-up models for isolated clients; the infrastructure required to support long-term volunteer sustainability; and, most importantly, the preservation and expansion of spaces where people feel genuinely welcome.
In the months ahead, this partnership will grow—not only in scope, but in spirit. What we witnessed at Feeding Windsor-Essex wasn't just a service model; it was a reminder of what community looks like when it's built on trust, proximity, and presence.
At St. Clair College, we are committed to building with—not for—our community partners. Through shared dialogue, grant collaboration, and student-led applied learning, we move toward a model of innovation that listens first. Because lasting change doesn't arrive fully formed. It begins with meals, with meaning, and with the quiet revolution already underway in our own neighbourhoods.
"Community-based research is rooted in collaboration, trust, and lived experience. It aims to address some of the most pressing issues impacting the well-being of our communities and beyond—by engaging those most affected in the process, valuing their knowledge, and co-creating solutions that are both meaningful and sustainable." – Sonja Popovski
Courtesy: Sonja Popovski, St. Clair College https://www.stclaircollege.ca/news/2025/innovation-listens-first-research-and-innovation-storytelling-and-community
