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Community's Role in Community Safety

Community of Practice

Next Meeting: November 26, 2025 | 1:00 - 2:00 p.m. ET
 
Topic: Restorative Justice as a framework with Kamil Ahmed from Community Justice Initiatives (CJI)
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Our Community of Practice at a Glance

This Community of Practice (CoP) is facilitated by Tamarack's Communities Building Belonging team, and is intended for practitioners committed to developing their understanding of the role of residents, governments, and institutions in creating community safety through peer-to-peer learning.

Explore with us how building a sense of belonging can address polarization and foster a holistic approach to community safety. We'll delve into challenges and successes in resident engagement and cross-sector collaboration.

 

Restorative Approaches to Community Safety: Moving Beyond Carceral Logic

 

How can we respond to harm without defaulting to punishment, urgency, and scarcity? This one-hour virtual seminar, designed for the Communities Building Belonging Community of Practice, invites staff and practitioners to explore restorative justice as a powerful lens for preventing and reducing harm in the face of conflict and social polarization.

 

We will understand restorative justice and some of its applications, and examine how carceral thinking—often accelerated by limited resources, high stakes, and broad scopes of responsibility—can unintentionally perpetuate cycles of conflict, undermining community safety and wellbeing. Drawing on our agency’s real-world work, participants will see how restorative approaches focus on accountability, repair, and strengthened relationships, creating lasting impact beyond immediate crises.

 

This session offers practical frameworks to embody restorative practice to foster collaboration, reflection, and intentional action. Participants will leave inspired and equipped to apply restorative principles, reimagining interventions that strengthen social cohesion and build safer, more resilient communities.

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Meet Your Community of Practice Facilitator

 

Kamil Ahmed

Kamil AhmedKamil (he/him) is a first-generation immigrant and settler from Pakistan who arrived in Waterloo Region to complete his Bachelor of Arts in Global Studies and Community Engagement at Wilfrid Laurier University. Kamil has been living, working and organizing in Kitchener-Waterloo on the Haldimand Tract for the past 10 years. Passionate about mutual aid, disrupting carceral logic and building communities of care, Kamil is a restorative justice practitioner with Community Justice Initiatives, an organizer at Community Fridge KW and a director at tri-Pride. He is a photographer, space-maker, music enthusiast, vegetarian, and a big fan of farmers' markets. 

As a coordinator to CJI’s Identity-Based Harm Programming, Kamil find purpose in working with, and in service to community equipping and facilitating restorative approaches to hate crime and identity-based harm across the spectrum of intent and impact; an approach that offers opportunity to meet justice, healing, and accountability needs in tandem with inviting understanding, bridging differences, and fostering spaces and relations of belonging. In his role as Director of Partnerships and Knowledge Mobilization, Kamil plays the role of capacity-builder, supporting workplaces, governments and coalitions across Waterloo Region to embed and embody restorative practices that lend themselves to empowered and capable cultural fabrics. Kamil is a facilitator, trainer, Circle-Keeper and passionate speaker. Kamil has journeyed with and supported capacity in teams across the City of Kitchener and City of Waterloo, Region of Waterloo, the KW Multicultural Centre, SPECTRUM, House of Friendship, Thrive, Human Rights Commission of Newfoundland and Labrador, Restorative Justice PEI, Canadian Centre for Safer Communities and more.

 

Savroop ShergillSavroop Shergill

Savroop Shergill (she/they) is the Manager of Communities for the Community Climate Transitions and Communities Building Belonging teams at Tamarack. Sav is committed to decolonial praxis, abolitionism, and third-world and Black feminist principles. She is a registered Social Worker and community organizer. She has worked with survivors of gendered violence, houseless youth, immigrant communities, incarcerated folks, diverse faith communities and S2LGBTQ+ youth and elders. She is passionate about addressing and dismantling the various systemic barriers that marginalized youth and their communities face.

Sav lives and works on Treaty Thirteen Territory, signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaties, signed with multiple different Mississaugas and Chippewa bands. This place has been the traditional home and meeting place of Indigenous peoples since time immemorial. Tkaronto, colonially known as Toronto, is on the traditional territories of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabeg, Huron-Wendat, the Chippewa, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. In the Mohawk language, “Tkaronto" means "the place in the water where the trees are standing." She is passionate about addressing and dismantling the various systemic barriers to support climate justice and belonging work across different communities on Turtle Island.

Contact Sav: Savroop@tamarackcommunity.ca

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Resource Library

2025

  • Spring CoP Call: April 30, 2025 | 1:00 - 2:00 p.m. ET
  • Summer CoP Call: July 30, 2025 | 1:00 - 2:00 p.m. ET
  • Fall CoP Call: November 5, 2025 | 1:00 - 2:00 p.m. ET

 

2024

  • Elisabeth Miller, Senior Planner at the City of Saskatoon, shared how the City is adopting and applying the principles of Safe Growth and Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) to work alongside residents to improve perceptions of community safety.

  • Latonya Ludford, Canada Project Manager at The Shift shared with us some of the key elements of meaningful engagement — including the difference between consultation and meaningful engagement — highlighted the importance of safety both in and around encampments, and shared examples of communities making efforts towards taking a human rights-based approach to housing.

  • On this call, the CoP got to know each other, develop a sense of the current strengths and challenges of community safety in its local contexts, and discuss what would make this Community of Practice useful this year.

 

2023

2022

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