‘I believe there is a way forward’
Coteau says $47-million plan will focus on mentorship for Ontario’s black youth
More likely to be in the care of children’s aid. More likely to drop out of high school. Less likely to attend college or university.
Noting these grim statistics for black youth, MPP Michael Coteau also spoke about his experiences growing up in Toronto’s Flemingdon Park, a place of much promise — but one where he knew more kids who died of violence than went on to post-secondary studies.
“The situation may sound hopeless, but I believe there is a way forward,” Coteau, the province’s minister of children and youth services, told the Economic Club in a speech last week — the first-ever talk on racism given to the business crowd.
“We are starting in our own backyard.”
In March, Coteau, as head of the province’s anti-racism initiatives, introduced a multi-year strategy, which includes $47 million for an Ontario Black Youth Action Plan to directly help at least 11,000 kids from preschool to post-secondary.
“We have identified some areas that we think are important,” he said in an interview with the Star. “Mentorship — we know it works. We know that the early years programs that are out there are not necessarily working within some communities.
“We are also going to move forward with an awareness campaign around violence and how it affects communities, and it will be targeted directly into the communities that are affected.”
NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said her party has been pushing the Liberal government for some time to move on this file, after years of reports and studies, and especially after the “summer of the gun” in 2005, when a wave of violence hit Toronto.
“It’s a situation that continues to be very, very problematic and worrisome and it affects so many young people in so many communities,” she said, adding any initiative will need to be properly funded.
“Many of our systems are not meeting the needs of the diversity of our population the way they should be.”
Coteau, who took on the anti-racism portfolio last year, is a former Toronto school board trustee. He says boosting graduation rates among black youth is key, as is reducing youth violence.
“The numbers are startling,” he said. “I just want to find ways to re- duce those numbers (of violent incidents), reduce incarceration levels, increase graduation levels and have more young people enter post-secondary. Those are my personal goals.”
The father of two said going to university was a “game changer” in his own life, one he’d never considered until he transferred to Leaside High School in Grade 11.
“I went back to speak to this gentleman in my building, who is from the same island as my father (Carriacou, in Grenada), and you know he was one of the most educated people that I knew — he was a teacher back home — and he said you need to go, and in fact he gave me the $50 to apply.”
For Coteau, the first in his immediate family to go to university, it was a decision that “opened up so many doors” and led him to becoming a cabinet minister.
“There’s a lot of success that comes from Flemingdon Park,” he said. “I just know there could potentially be an explosion of success from a neighbourhood like that.”
The government is now reaching out to leaders in the community to work together to determine which grassroots programs are successful for youth, which ones aren’t, and to provide some co-ordination for those the government will fund.
“My job,” Coteau said, “is to make sure that we are putting the money in the right place.”
Likwa Nkala, manager of the youth outreach worker program at East Metro Youth Services in Scarborough, said safe spaces for kids to go after school that offer multimedia or other programs are one way to build skills, “help promote youth engagement, and get to a place of leadership . . . or lead to part-time employment.”
Finding programs for parents and connecting families with services they need is a good way to provide support, something the youth outreach workers he oversees do on a regular basis.
Nkala points to the success of programs that reach out to young mothers and fathers in Scarborough through Rosalie Hall, where workers connect and support parents. They recently screened a movie made with youth outreach workers like Michael Kissi, who profiled young black fathers in their 20s in Daddy’s Home.
Nkala likes the idea of the province collecting race-based data, to provide communities “with services that have an impact.”
“No one agency has the answer,” he added.
“We have to find a way of bringing them together.”