Pilot project with DSBN aimed at preventing youth homelessness
ALLAN BENNER
After successfully launching a pilot program designed to keep teenagers from heading down a path towards homelessness, RAFT executive director Michael Lethby hopes to expand it.
Lethby was at Niagara’s public health and social services committee meeting Tuesday to discuss the Upstream Project, a pilot-program run in partnership with District School Board of Niagara to identify at risk youth and provide the supports they need.
The pilot project, implemented in the spring at a single high school that isn’t being identified, has already shown results, identifying two students whom the organization was able to help.
Lethby said he hopes that through the new Upstream Project, based on an initiative that has proven successful in Australia, RAFT will be able reach out to those remaining at risk youth, too, and prevent them from winding up in RAFT’s St. Catharines shelter in the first place.
Lethby hopes to expand the pilot project to other high schools.
“That’s my goal,” he said. “I think that’s what we’re trying to work towards.”
DSBN student achievement leader Ann Harrison said the Upstream Project will be returning to the same secondary school this year, and there is hope to expand it to a second high school within the public board.
“The more we can catch students and prevent them from leaving school, which is what happens when they become homeless, the more we can support them the better off they are,” she said.
Lethby said he hopes to expand the pilot-program to other school boards, as well.
As it expands, Lethby said the program will require additional infrastructure and resources.
“Eventually it’s going to come down to money,” he said in an interview.
Lethby said the new Upstream Project also builds on the success of RAFT’s Youth Reconnect Program, launched in 2008.
Prior to implementing the Reconnect Program, Lethby said about 471 youth accessed RAFT’s emergency shelter. As a result of that program, he said the agency has managed to reduce that number to 126. “But we’re still at 126,” he said. “We have access now to those 126 youth that we wouldn’t have been able to access. I think it’s very encouraging. We know they’re there.”
Despite claims in an online article that has been widely circulated through social media, a spokesperson for Tweed Farms says it has not purchased Coyote’s Run, the winery next door to the soon-to-be largest legal medical marijuana facility in the world — nor does it have any plans to buy it.
The article says the St. Davids winery, which was purchased by a Toronto businessman about a year ago, is closing at the end of November, with the vineyards to be replaced by Tweed greenhouses.
“Canopy Growth hasn’t purchased Coyote Run and doesn’t intend to,” said Jordan Sinclair, spokesperson for Canopy Growth, Tweed Farm’s parent company.
“That said, we’re proud of the investments we’ve made in Niagaraon-the-Lake and are committed to providing jobs and investment in the area as we expand our operations at Tweed Farms.”
Tweed is expanding on its Concession 5 property and announced this summer that it has purchased a next door greenhouse operation from a former flower grower and is in the process of converting it to marijuana production. Once expansion is complete, the facility will have about 90,000 square metres (one million square feet) of growing capacity.
In regards to the online story, Sinclair said it is “being driven by people who don’t have the authority to speak on this.”
“The claims are from people who don’t have access to the correct information,” he said. “When we buy something, we are very proud to announce it.”
He pointed to a Canopy Growth announcement last week as an example of how the company conducts itself — it was widely reported that it is expanding into British Columbia through a partnership with a largescale greenhouse operator with 117,000 square metres of space that will be converted to cannabis production. Canopy Growth is positioning itself to be a major Canadian supplier of recreational marijuana, which is expected to be legalized by July 2018, and of medical marijuana as it becomes legal in European countries, Sinclair said earlier this year.
Canopy Growth’s B.C. operation joins its marijuana production facilitiesinAlberta,Saskatchewan,Quebec and New Brunswick, a total of five in Ontario, and plants in Denmark, Germany, Brazil, Chile, Australia and Spain. Staff at Coyote’s Run would not comment on the article, and the owner could not be reached.