Pubdate: Tue, 25 Oct 2005
Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)
Copyright: 2005 The Toronto Star
Contact:  http://www.thestar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456
Author: Maryam Behmard
Note: Maryam Behmard is a student at Seneca College.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)

IN THE TRENCHES AT JANE-FINCH

Local Groups Struggle to Cope and Be Heard.

Despite the focus on neighbourhoods that face shootings and
gang-related violence on a weekly basis, the dedicated community
workers who devote their time and energy to helping residents of these
troubled communities remain largely unnoticed and ignored.

Winston Lerose runs the Jane and Finch Concerned Citizens
Organization. The office rent is overdue but, in conjunction with
Toronto City Housing, he manages to line up job opportunities for new
immigrants and the high number of unemployed people in the community.
Professional sewing and computer skills are just two of the programs
JFCCO has to offer.

Lerose lists several problems facing young people in the Jane-Finch
community but focuses on the education system's zero-tolerance policy.
He has witnessed children as young as 9 being suspended or expelled
from school, becoming prey for drug dealers and gangs.

"Kids at a young age involved in selling drugs see an economic
opportunity," Lerose says. "We need to train children and provide the
right education."

Lerose says the education system must keep children in the school
environment where they can learn discipline and the vital social,
analytical and technical skills they will need in order to get a job
when they are older.

This task has been made more difficult by cutbacks in extra-curricular
activities offered by schools, and the inability of cash-strapped
grassroots organizations to take up the slack.

Mark De Zilva, a teacher and karate instructor, says children growing
up in Jane-Finch, like those in any neighbourhood, want to be someone
and belong to something.

"Kids are told what they should accomplish but what they're given is a
lot less," he says. "The curriculum should provide alternative routes
for students, training in trade-based skills like plumbing and
carpentry, skills that they can actually get work with."

De Zilva adds that with few extra-curricular activities and sports,
and little access to after-school community centres, these kids are
literally left standing around in the streets.

Many of the programs the city initiates are cancelled after a year or
less, resulting in a lack of continuity. How can children learn what
it means to have respect, discipline, self-worth and motivation when
nothing offered to them is sustained?

"With anything that is started in Jane-Finch, there is no consistency,
the funding is minimal and the programs are discontinued after a short
period of time," De Zilva says.

The Jobs for Youth Program is one example of a city-province project
that creates summer jobs for young people in priority communities. The
provincial government contributed $500,000 this year to the project,
which provided job opportunities for 110 youths from the Jane-Finch
area. Employment was limited to the summer period. The City of Toronto
issued a report after last year's version of the same program
indicating that the youth involved still did not feel prepared to
pursue and obtain jobs independently.

Another initiative is the Mayor's Advisory Panel on Community Safety,
launched in 2004 to guide the city in preventing violence and building
safer communities. The group's mandate is to "take action while
bringing together civic and community leaders to focus on solutions to
combat violence."

Yet here again there is a disconnect between government and
community.

The 10-member city panel consists overwhelmingly of politicians like
Monte Kwinter, Ontario's minister of community safety and correctional
Services, Scarborough Councillor Michael Thompson and Sheila Ward,
chair of the Toronto School Board. The panel also includes two youth
representatives and one community representative, whom many Jane-Finch
community workers have never heard of or met.

Lerose and De Zilva are among the community workers who know the
problems facing the Jane-Finch neighbourhood. But they don't sit on
the city panel, nor have they been asked to provide input. Some
community organizations are on the brink of closure because of a lack
of funding and government assistance.

If the city's leaders want to tackle the problem of gun violence, kids
joining gangs, and drugs circulating in these troubled areas, it
should be listening to the concerns raised by people like Lerose and
De Zilva. Then maybe they'll know what's actually going on.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake