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Youth Development and Violence Prevention

Working with families to identify and prioritize problems together

In the Fall of 2019, the wider community started learning about bullying and fist fights, bridge blockades, stabbings, and shootings -- connected to problems occuring at Marc Garneau Collegiate Institute (MGCI).

We started to interview parents and youth to learn about their perspective on the violence. Look below to learn more

Youth Development and Violence Prevention: What We Do

Step 1: Identifying and Prioritizing Problems Together

Community engagement team meets many times with residents to:

  • identify problems connected with youth violence affecting families and youth

  • identify causes and root causes of these problems

  • select problems that the community considers most important that need to be addressed

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What are we learning? Start with youth violence, all these intersecting areas come up

These are topics that were expressed by parents and youth, in order of times we heard them:

  1. Education

  2. Lack of Voice

  3. Economic Stability

  4. Neighbourhood Issues

  5. Medical Challenges

  6. Housing

  7. Racism

Youth Development and Violence Prevention: Text

The social determinants of health connect all these areas. The engagement meetings identify and help prioritize areas of focus

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Who is going to work on all these interconnected issues? Many stakeholders:

The image below shows the Urban Education Ecosystem as developed by the StrivePartnership.

Here's a bit of info on each area:

Influencers: individuals with whom youth trusts and interacts with intimately

Community: the organizations and informal associations aligned with place

Institutions: the organizations and agencies that typically drive collective impact for urban youth

Systems: large, mostly governmental agencies that drive policies

Channels:

Care: Commited to the youth's whoe being

Civic: focused on some aspect of youth development, such as health or education

Commerce: engage youth primarily as a consumer

The key idea is to consider the strengths in each of these areas, and build on those strengths, instead of just focusing on deficiencies. 

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YOUTH MUST BE INVOLVED IN PRIORITIZING PROBLEMS AND CREATING SOLUTIONS BECAUSE IT’S THEIR LIFE. THE CARE CHANNEL MUST ALSO BE INVOLVED BECAUSE THEY ARE DEEPLY COMMITTED TO THE YOUTH.

YOUTH SUCCESS IS A COORDINATED EFFORT BETWEEN FAMILY, COMMUNITY AND MANY AGENCIES. QUESTION: IN OUR COMMUNITY, WHO IS OR WILL BE ORGANIZING FOR COLLECTIVE IMPACT?

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What is Engaged Communities doing now?

  • Engagement process Step 1: Verifying early findings with Syrian community (Arabic), prioritizing issues

    • Running a larger community engagement

  • Engaging other stakeholders (Care channel: youth and parents from non-Syrian communities. Civic channel: schools, police, social agencies) 

    • Describing what we are doing

    • Getting them on board

    • Getting funding to run community engagement training for residents

    • Working together on short-term interventions: e.g. Hsain/Aamir/Youth meetings, parents councils connections, connecting MGCI Principal and Parents Council with Syrian mothers, various programs for youth

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Youth Development and Violence Prevention: Text
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