Suzanne Klassen

Suzanne worked in the social services sector for more than 40 years, providing support and training for several provincial crisis lines, running an advocacy program for people with disabilities and providing support and volunteer programs for seniors. As a mediator in BC Supreme and Provincial courts, she was very fortunate to be part of the Youth Criminal Justice pilot, which introduced some restorative practice to the adversarial judicial system. A committed collaborationist, she has worked with many agencies to bring those restorative practices into action outside the courts, most usefully through the Community Response Network, where they developed a community building series and toolkit in response to conflict in seniors congregate living.

Suzanne took SFU’s certificate on Dialogue and Community Engagement in 2015 and have done large and small scale projects through several agencies. She continues to use those tools along with ones picked up from Theatre for Living (participatory theatre) training to support collaborative endeavors in her new position as Community Engagement Coordinator at Brightside Community Homes. 

Both residents and agencies have been eager to move on from Covid (fingers crossed!) and to start working toward reconnecting and rebuilding communities across the city, so it’s a very exciting time to be doing this work, especially with the support of Hey Neighbour Collective.