40 MENTORS YOUTHS
Students in Jane-Finch initiative eager to prove ’we are capable of doing something better in our community,’
who hit the streets at age 14 and lived in various downtown Toronto youth shelters for about a decade. “But I know the strength of youth and what they can do.”
Almost 200,000 Toronto youth ages 15 to 29 — just over one in three — live in one of the city’s 13 priority neighbourhoods, including Jane-Finch. That number jumps to almost one in two — or almost 65,000 — for youth ages 15 to 19.
These neighbourhoods, identified by United Way Toronto and city hall as low income and lacking in community services, have been earmarked for social and capital investment. But for many area residents, positive change is often pierced by gun violence, drug busts and bad press.
Anucha developed the concept for the NOISE project, (New Opportunities for Innovative Student Engagement), out of a larger York research initiative on youth funded through a five-year, $1-million grant from the Canadian Social Services and Humanities Research Council.
One of the findings is that the gap is widening between the percentage of JaneFinch students completing university and those outside priority neighbourhoods.
By 2006, about 58 per cent of young adults outside priority neighbourhoods had post-secondary degrees versus only 34 per cent in Jane-Finch.
In today’s economy, a high school diploma isn’t enough to secure a steady, wellpaying job with a future.
The research also shows that confidence plummets as youth enter high school, as does support from family, school and community.
Youth surveys in Jane-Finch show a love of community, but found many felt no one expected them to participate.
“We wanted to do something to bridge the gap between Grade 8 and Grade 9. To ease the transition,” Anucha says. “We also looked at how to engage youth in doing something for their communities instead of being service recipients. We wanted to make them feel they can contribute.”
The “relentless stigmatization” of priority neighbourhoods creates as much pain as physical violence and can last longer, Anucha says.
If you are constantly being told you live in a crime-ridden, dangerous community, you begin to believe it and become it, Anucha says. This is the violence of low expectations her project is trying to confront.
Anucha has received $50,000 from York Provost Rhonda Lenton, to continue the NOISE project next year with an additional 20 students from the nearby priority neighbourhood of Weston-Mt. Dennis.
Eventually, as the group tweaks the model, she would like to see it replicated in all 13 priority neighbourhoods.
The university students are learning as much from the project as the Jane-Finch youth.
Chiara Podovani, 24, a Master’s student who worked on the basketball tournament, summed up her group’s experience this way: “Social change looked like teamwork, sounded like laughter and fun, tasted like pizza and snacks, smelled like sweat — and felt like success.”