Youth worker stays connected
Grinning sheepishly, Kehinde Bah said, “ I suck at PowerPoint.” He was being a bit hard on himself, but it would be fair to say that reading mouthfuls of bureaucratese off a computer projection is not his strong suit.
That should come as a relief to anyone who cares about what’s happening at city hall. After five years at the nerve centre of Toronto’s municipal government, the talented youth worker hasn’t turned into a junior functionary, a well-behaved token or an aspiring power- broker.
Bah, 26, is a member of Mayor David Miller’s panel on community safety. He joined former mayor Mel Lastman’s youth cabinet at 21. He is a fixture at city hall. Everybody knows him. Journalists quote him. But he keeps one foot in the world he came from. Bah grew up in the Blake Boultbee community, a subsidized housing development near Gerrard and Pape on the city’s east side. His mother, an immigrant from Nigeria, raised him and his twin brother on her earnings as a seamstress. Bah started going to the local Boys and Girls Club because of the snacks. It was a better way to get candy than by stealing it. Gradually he became a volunteer, a leader, a voice for kids who’d seen too much, too soon. But most of his friends stayed behind with few prospects and little hope. Some drifted into crime. Three years ago, his best friend, youth worker Kempton Howard, was shot dead in the hallway of one of the apartments in Blake Boultbee. The only way he could change things, Bah decided, was to speak out, get involved, tell middle-class politicians about a world they didn’t understand. When he’s stuck in an interminable committee meeting or asked to make a PowerPoint presentation, he’s not always sure he’s making a difference. But when he’s back on the streets he is. “ It’s easier to see it in kids’ faces. They hear me saying what they’re feeling. They come up to me and say: I saw you on TV and I think I could do that.” Bah stayed to chat after a recent session of the Mayor’s Roundtable on Children, Youth and Education. He’d just made a somewhat stilted PowerPoint presentation on Toronto’s youth strategy, an 11- page action plan to address the barriers that are holding back so many low- income kids. He struggled to get his tongue around the sociological jargon. The run-on sentences choked him. Finally, in evident relief, he turned the floor over to Councillor Shelley Carroll, his co- chair on the city’s Youth Working Group. She highlighted one of the points in the report. What the working group kept hearing, Carroll stressed, was that young people from public housing projects couldn’t break into the job market. “ They have to lie about where they live to get an interview.”
Suddenly, Bah opened up. “ What kids say to me is: We don’t really see where the ( city’s) money goes. We don’t see how it’s working.
“ I talk to some of my school friends who are in trouble and they say: If I had abusiness that could employ my family and the people in my neighbourhood, I’d never go back to the streets.
“ Some kids aren’t built for the 9- to- 5, wear- a- suit- every- day deal. They don’t want menial work either. But if we could help them start their own businesses, they’d have a chance of making it.”
Friends say that Bah is at his best when he throws away his script and speaks spontaneously. They say he can light up a room. But he says he does his best work behind the scenes. He’s the one who tells city bureaucrats that a youth program they think is brilliant won’t actually work. He’s the one who makes sure the politicians are aware of what people are saying on the streets. He’s the one who’s there for black youth when they need help.
Toronto’s youth strategy, despite its bureaucratic packaging, bears Bah’s imprint. It calls for dedicated funding for youth-led organizations, money that won’t be chopped at budget time. It calls for policing that deals with criminal behaviour, “ not ethno- racial heritage or manner of dress or speech.” It calls on the city to open up yearround jobs, training and apprenticeship programs to kids from low-income neighbourhoods. The plan goes to council in January. Bah will be there fighting for it, any way he has to. Carol Goar’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.