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. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake