In 2010, in response to youth in our community expressing a need for support in securing employment interest in getting exposure to greater career options, we launched our March Break “Employment Readiness and Career Exploration” program for 30 students with support from Westview Centennial and the Toronto District School Board. The focus at that time was on important items such as resumes, cover letters, interview skills, goal-setting, time-management and financial literacy.

Late in 2013, Success Beyond Limits joined the Hive Toronto (@HiveToronto) and this got us thinking about what career exploration and employment readiness means for youth in 2014. That opened up issues about the location of the program (bringing it into the core of the city) and the types of skills and experiences that we needed to offer.

The program is ran from March 10th to 14th with 60 students (20 being paid through the TDSB Focus on Youth Program, and 10 being paid through SBL), and was delivered out of the Mozilla community space. You can get a sense of how amazing it was in the pages that follow!

sbl-MarchBreakReport-v5

Alana Persaud’s (SBL Placement Student/ Seneca Student) response to Black Creek neighbourhood deemed Toronto’s least livable on March 13^th, 2014 & Future opens wide for Jane-Finch teens at downtown Toronto career camp on March 14^th, 2014 :

Being a placement student with the Success Beyond Limits Education program through a program at Seneca College has been filled with great opportunities and excellent experiences working with youth and staff. Taking part in SBL March Break program gave me a chance to spend more time in connecting with the youth and also gave them a chance to listen and learn about themselves. These youth are truly intelligent and are always striving to succeed; be it in their academic studies or the time and effort they put into the SBL afterschool program. It brings big disappointment to me reading the article posted by the Toronto Star. Having to read such negative and stereotypical remarks was just rude and insulting.

Why is my community always downgraded for being known as the “needy” and assuming that these youths and families have no future? This is just a ridiculous ongoing issue and it needs to come to an end now. When we productively engage in preparing our youth for job opportunities, post secondary opportunities or taking them out for some fun it is always noted as a negative helpless act of kindness through the eyes of the media. For this, our youth and community members have been greatly shocked by these implications.

Regardless of the labeling and ranking, it is not the people that are to be blamed for what goes on in our community. Things happen and they happen everywhere not just in one community. We are always out there trying to make a change and we do make a difference but for some reason people are unable to accept this change. I will go out of my way to ensure that the media acknowledges my response as well as my peers and has sincerity in apologizing for this unacceptable post. A story does not have one side.

Sincerely,

Alana Persaud (SBL Placement Student/Seneca student)

Cawsalya Nithyantharajah’s (SBL student/Westview Centennial student) response to Black Creek neighbourhood deemed Toronto’s least livable on March 13^th, 2014:

I strongly believe that the article Black Creek neighboorhood deemed Toronto’s least livable is a very disrespectful article. They are acting like they know us and they really do not. They want to bring us down and give the community a bad look. I was born and raised in Jane and Finch and I personally find my community to be an amazing place. The writers are making it seem like we are not wealthy and making it look like we are a bunch of uneducated dummies.

Sincerely,

Cawsalya Nithyantharajah (SBL student/Westview Centennial student)

Jumoke Jimoh’s (SBL Student/ Westview Centennial student) response to Black Creek neighbourhood deemed Toronto’s least livable on March 13^th, 2014:

I felt very hurt by this article.  I feel Jane and Finch is already judged so much and for this article to say that the Jane and Finch community is rated the worst community in Toronto hurts.  I think if other communities were focused on as much as Jane and Finch, people would not target the Jane Finch community as much.  It hurts the most because people only see Jane and Finch for the bad things and do not even consider the people that have a lot of potential and the ones that offer a lot to the community.  Jane and Finch has so much talent, but no one notices because they are too focused on the bad things that come up in the news.  People do not realize other communities also have their ups and downs.  Overall, maybe the statistics are true, but this article was not needed because of the amount of negativity it portrays.

Sincerely,

Jumoke Jimoh’s (SBL student/ Westview Centennial student)

Kareem Bennett’s (SBL Mentor/Westview Centennial Student) response to Future opens wide for Jane-Finch teens at downtown Toronto career camp on March 14^th, 2014:

The Toronto Star’s article on our programming completely took our message and focus out of context. This post portrays us as ignorant. I believe the journalist had a very narrow outlook on what kind of community Jane & Finch is. They completely misunderstood what our program’s focus is, which in the papers, makes our community seem worse off than it really is. I believe the article was written out of sympathy and stereotypically speaking, this only creates problems for youth in our program and in the community.

Sincerely,

Kareem Bennett’s (SBL Mentor/Westview Centennial student)

Sabrina Gajadhar’s (SBL Mentor/Westview Centennial student) response to Future opens wide for Jane-Finch teens at downtown Toronto career camp on March 14^th, 2014:
Living in the Jane and Finch community all my life it is safe to say that I am growing up the right way, like most of the kids in this area. A very large percent of Westview teachers are teachers who have attended Westview themselves. This shows evidently that the area is not a problem the media portrays it to be. Success Beyond Limits did not save the teens as this article attempts to imply but has made us better. We as Jane and Finch students are not doomed, but rather misunderstood. Success Beyond Limits’ youth and all students in the area in general are going to be successful no matter how “unlivable” the area is.

Sincerely,

Sabrina Gajadhar’s (SBL Mentor/Westview Centennial student)

Saifullah Khan’s (SBL Mentor/Westview Centennial student) response to Black Creek neighbourhood deemed Toronto’s least livable on March 13^th, 2014:

As I read the article Black Creek neighbourhood deemed Toronto’s least livable over and over words cannot express how I feel. We as a community and an organization (Success Beyond Limits) like to think positive in every situation we are dealt with. Reading these articles in the newspaper will not only reflect bad on us as a community but the self-esteem of the individuals living in Jane & Finch will lower since the article claims to see no improvements.

Sincerely,

Saifullah Khan (SBL Mentor/Westview Centennial student)

Tysha Tomlinson’s (SBL Mentor/Westview Centennial student) response to Black Creek neighbourhood deemed Toronto’s least livable on March 13^th, 2014:

Reading the article Black Creek neighbourhood deemed Toronto’s least livable has brought numerous amounts of hateful thoughts and emotions towards the Toronto Star. It has made me realize how ignorant individuals outside off the Jane and Finch community can really be.

The words written in this article are extremely shameful on our society, but I am very glad and fortunate to get the chance to say they are untrue. It is unfortunate that people who live outside of Jane and Finch have nothing but negativity to say about a beautiful community they know nothing of. I was personally offended by this hateful message the Toronto Star has published. It is very sad that the numerous amounts of positive programs in Jane and Finch such as Success Beyond Limits had to be portrayed in this way. Success Beyond Limits is an amazing program that helps many youth and is just one of the many great organizations in Jane and Finch that help Jane and Finch be a great place to live.

As a resident of Jane and Finch I would like to say your article was false and created many more negative names for our community. Jane and Finch is a beautiful community where many amazing people live and grow to become wonderful people in our world and that is what should had been announced in your article.

Sincerely,

Tysha Tomlinson (SBL Mentor/Westview Centennial student)

During March Break 2014, youth and staff from Success Beyond Limits had quotes and images that were a part of a few newspaper articles in the Toronto Star and in the Metro Paper.

One of the articles written by Zoe McKnight was titled, “Black Creek neighbourhood deemed Toronto’s least livable” was about the release of the Toronto Strong Neighbourhoods Strategy 2020 ranking system being adopted by the City of Toronto to replace the Priority Neighbourhod designation and the placement of Jane-Finch (aka Black Creek) at the bottom of the 140 neighbourhoods measured.

The second article by Louise Brown was titled, “Future opens wide for Jane-Finch teens at downtown Toronto career camp”, and focused on our March Break Career Exploration program, with links being made to the bigger conversation about the position of Jane and Finch on the ranking.

Knowing that we do not have control over what is published, students and staff expected to have their views of the community and program they love presented as challenges to the commonly held beliefs about Jane and Finch.  Youth in Jane and Finch being profiled in ways that challenges stereotypes is a positive thing, but also feels negated when the community they are from and love is described as “the least livable” in Toronto.  Their success is not a contrast with their community or despite their community, it is from their community and largely because of their community.

Within both of the pieces published, powerful voices were shared and a spotlight was placed on some very real issues, yet the conversation also fell into a representation of the realities of life in Jane and Finch that missed the mark in some ways.

Youth in Jane and Finch are not plotting a way out of their community to find opportunity, they are building on the opportunities they have in their community and connecting to opportunities in other parts of their city.  Hope and inspiration are a part of the fabric of the community.

The fact is that the Toronto Star is one of the few spaces that have been willing to entertain conversations about coverage that profiles youth in Jane and Finch outside of the tragedies that attract media trucks from every media outlet in our city.  The Toronto Star has also provided extensive coverage of tragedy.  This conversation is not single out the Toronto Star, but it is to find a way to go deeper in the dialogue.

The story here is not youth escaping bleak odds, it is how young leaders in Jane and Finch – who play a major role in the strength of the community – exemplify how rich life and leadership in the community is, despite being failed, decade after decade, by those charged with providing equitable services and infrastructure across Toronto. The tension is that youth in Jane and Finch love living in their community and that this livability ranking does not measure failures of people in the community, they are indicators that point out public systems and institutions that are falling short of providing equitable services.

Consideration needs to be given to the impact of discussing a community that people love living in as the “least livable” without challenging that notion of livability and pointing to those who are actually responsible for the 15 outcomes being measured.

Thought needs to be given to how a community where going for a walk is a great part of day-to-day life is being described as not being “walkable”, which reinforces stereotypes held outside the community of Jane and Finch not being a safe place to walk (which the CBC Crime Map proves is safer than Bay Street).

When we look at a neighbourhood that is scoring low in the area of education (graduation rates) where 60 students from the community packed a sign up sheet for a March Break Career Exploration program that required them to be at the bus stop at 8am each day for their entire week off and got them home around 7pm each day, one thing that is obvious is that this gap has little to do with students in the community.

So how do we talk about a neighbourhood with structural and systemic gaps without making life in the neighbourhood seem so bleak (and making young people in the community the centre of the problems we are discussing)?

In developing the Toronto Youth Equity Strategy the City of Toronto encountered a similar dilemma when talking about terms like “at-risk” to describe the young people that the strategy was being built for, and by.  In the report released to outline the strategy they explain that, “Not only did we find that these labels were often unclear in describing the circumstances that place racialized and low-income youth in positions of vulnerability, but youth have told us repeatedly that these labels further stigmatize and marginalize youth in their communities.”  The report goes on to make their position clear: “Vulnerability is defined by the City of Toronto as a service gap, context or situation, not a characteristic or feature of a person.”

Assets Coming Together for Youth, a youth-engaged research project from the School of Social Work at York University shared powerful findings that punctuated what youth in Jane and Finch involved as researchers with the project uncovered.

One of the findings was categorized as, “Stigma & Production of Negative Discourse” which was explained saying:

“The media portray Jane/Finch as a crime-ridden neighbourhood, and the political label of “priority neighbourhood” also contributes to the negative branding of the community. This relentless stigmatization is a form of violence for youth, many of whom reject depictions of their community as troubled, but who acknowledge the challenges they face. “

Another key finding was that of “Resilient Youth / Weak Systems”, which points out, “(w)hen “systems” fail, individuals are often identified as the problem. However, despite evident systemic barriers, many Jane/Finch youth share the asset of resilience.”

Which brings us full circle.  The most recent conversation about Jane and Finch was sparked by the Strong Neighbourhood Strategy, so let’s return to that.  You can go through the measurements they use, one by one, and follow the line of accountability.  Let’s look at walkability, this is a city planning issue.  Or employment, which is shaped by a combination of investment from government and the private sector, the climate for small businesses, transportation, and the strength of labour to name a few factors.

The pattern that can be found, item after item, is that the ‘score’ in each category leads back to systems and institutions, not young people living in the community.  Systems and institutions are where the deficit exists, and that is where the deficit should be addressed; which can be done simultaneously as we stand beside and celebrate the young leaders in Jane and Finch and throughout the neighbourhoods of our city that make Toronto one of the most ‘livable’ cities in the world.

As a part of our collaboration with the Art Gallery of York University we connected with an organization called archiTEXT and completed a two-day design charette with the first day focused on designing the community and the second day focused on designing our youth space at Westview.

Attached is the summary report.

SBL AGYU Design Charrette Summary

Jane-Finch youth use voices and art to inspire change

Suviana Burey, 17, Kareem Bennett, 18, and Destiny Henry, 17, are among a group of students from Jane and Finch who have created works reflecting their lives, struggles and dreams for their community.

On display at York University, eight young artists created works based on their own lives, struggles and dreams for their community.

At a new art exhibit at York University, the walls do talk — with the voices of eight youth from Jane and Finch, who speak about their personal tragedies as they counter ’hood stereotypes.

“If We Ruled The World” – a youth-led collaborative song

In August of 2013 a number of our mentors successfully applied to the Youth Action Grant offered by Toronto Community Housing.

One of the ideas from Kareem was to pull together some of the talent in Success Beyond Limits to create an original song.

Seeing an overlap, Kareem’s project was included in the multi-media art project that he was a part of titled “If We Ruled The World”, being delivered through a partnership through the Art Gallery of York University and SBL.

“If We Ruled The World” is finally complete.  Take in the talent and wisdom of SBL Mentors Aliyah, Kareem, Moose, Deshawn and Destiny.

Opening: Aliyah

Verse 1: Moose

Verse 2: Kareem

Verse 3: Deshawn

Chorus: Destiny

You can download the track by clicking on the link below.

SBL Mentors- If We Ruled The World (Produced by Octave aka Stel Bomber)

What Up T.O!

TOP 10 List

Right about this time of year there are Top 10 lists everywhere you turn.  In that vein, we have a list of our own (in NO particular order).

10.  New Team Members: adding Bryan Brown (Youth Outreach Worker) and Toota Hassanien (After School Supervisor).  Two exceptional new members of the SBL family!

9.  Collaboration: we can not list them all here, but the people, committees, organizations, agencies, funders, ministries, advisors, and partners that have stood with us in ways great and small define so much of what is possible through organic, authentic collaboration.

8.  Space (217 and Osgoode): We have been growing into our amazing space at Westview Centennial and we were welcomed into the beautifully renovated Osgoode Hall Law School at York U.  It’s not just having space, but the type of space that makes the difference.

7.  Coming Together Through Difficult Times: one only needs to have turned on the news this past year to know how many young people in the Jane and Finch community lost their lives tragically.  What was not shared across the city was how youth, mentors, and caring-adults came together and found strength in the bonds and love shared.

6.  Sharing Knowledge and Experience: our staff and mentors make a point of sharing our model and experiences wherever possible with the hope that other communities can learn from and take from what we have been a part of in Jane and Finch.  This past summer a community collective launched a summer program for youth in Malvern after inviting us to come out and share what we do and how we do it.

5.  A Special Graduation: SBL as an organization was founded in June of 2010, and one of the major forces behind this were the students that were in grade 9 that year.  This past June we witnessed many of those students take their final steps as Westview students across the stage to mark their secondary school graduation.

4. Our Mentees: Every summer we feel like our new grade 9s come in and make the program the best that it’s ever been.  Well that’s how we felt again this year.

3. Our Mentors: when the grade 9s come in, we know they will become mentors one day (but it is hard to imagine).  This year we really saw the inverse of that: mentees that had become mentors and shown so much growth that it was hard to remember them as grade 9s.

2. Our Parents: our programming is focused on youth and you want find much on our website about parents.  That said, a great deal of the work of our staff is meeting with parents, taking/making calls, and partnering on supporting students through barriers and towards success.  Many of the most touching moments of this past year were between parents, our staff and our students.

1. Our Teachers: every year we assemble a phenomenal team of eight Toronto District School Board teachers (via Continuing Education).  These are teachers that motivate 100+ thirteen and fourteen years olds to be on a school bus at 8am for six-weeks, who partner with senior high school students as mentors in the delivery of the credit, who build long-lasting relationships, and who embrace the power of community and school partnerships in empowering students.

Bryan Brown is committed to youth succeeding in all areas of their lives.  You aren’t likely to hear him say it, but watch him for a day and it is obvious.  His dedication to youth and community and his deep history in the North-West end of Toronto are among the reasons why Success Beyond Limits is so excited to have him as our first ever Youth Outreach Worker.

He joined our team in November, and dove right into the role adding another supportive face to our space and programming.  His ability to convey high expectations and deep caring in his interactions broke the ice of being ‘new’ right away.  His years of experience working with the City of Toronto Parks, Forestry and Recreation, and his extensive experience as a youth basketball coach have given him phenomenal skills for the position.

His focus will be expanding the reach of our programs and supports in the community, engaging youth facing significant barriers, and supporting them in identifying and making positive changes.

Bryan Brown can be reached at b.brown@successbl.com