Co- created with young people most marginalized from their rights
We talked. Let’s act!
I live in a semi detached on a small cul de sac in West End Toronto, my wife likes to say “downtown”, but we are not living downtown no matter how haughty that sounds. During the first wave of the pandemic everyone on our street seemed to possess a new found passion for gardening. “Its land Duddy Its Land!” Stooped backs, English and country gardens, herbs, vegetables, overwatering on tiny patches of dirt in front of their half of their semi. That activity, of course, in concert with the indoor quest to bake the perfect banana bread. Today as I look down my street from my perch on my porch I see bin after bin on what were those gardens ready to accept the spoils of renovating. “To hell with banana bread” my neighbours seem to have said.
I think of what young people who I have worked alongside for over 40 years, those most marginalized from their rights, might say to me with humour and cynicism; “Boredom is white people problems”.
The other night I received a message through Facebook messenger. It was from Jade a former youth in care who I knew from my days managing a Centre supporting young people leaving the child protection system. I only hear from Jade sporadically. She in my estimation had done well for herself. She graduated College, had a job she liked , stable housing and was finding a way through life. One can hardly imagine the effort and energy it takes a young person from care to accomplish this feat of courage. Reading her message though, my heart dropped. During the first wave of the pandemic she had lost her job as the industry she worked in had folded. Now her landlord evicted her and her housemates from the Toronto apartment they were living in. They had gone their separate ways. Perhaps more alarming the gym she had developed a community for herself in was now closed. Today she told me in her message she was alone. She had moved to a small city outside of Toronto because motel rooms were cheaper there by the month and she was living off her small savings trying to physically and emotionally survive the pandemic. She was in pain. It was the holiday season and there was no one. Alone. Her mental health frayed.
When my school age sons pester me with squabbling or stray from on line learning and my wife and I feel the pressure to juggle work from home, do our baking and look after the boys I remember Jade.
Jade may feel alone but she has plenty of company. Young people in and from care, young people with disabilities, Black and racialized youth, Indigenous youth, newcomer and refugee youth, LGBTQ2S youth prior to the pandemic all have faced such tremendous barriers to inclusion. Access to community, practical resources, their voice and identity, their rights have never come easily. So many have struggled to survive and overcome. Need proof? Visit the Ontario Child Advocate archives page and read what they have said through the reports they have written www.ocaarchives.wordpress.com
The pandemic and our collective response to it has in many ways not changed the barriers that already existed for these young people but certainly has exacerbated them. For those whose very lives were already precarious I do not believe it is hysterical to write that the pandemic and its sequele are life threatening.
So when a group of young Syrian Canadian students and professionals came to me and asked if I would support their campaign “In this Together” and their efforts at leading and pulling together a coalition of sorts of disenfranchised young people. I jumped at the opportunity.
“I know how it feels to not have enough support while in crisis.. As a teenager I lived in a war zone. As a young person growing up in Syria I worked on the ground providing mental health care. Today as a young person now in Canada during the pandemic I understand that each of our experiences will be different, but I don’t want any youth to feel the same way that I did”, Abrar Mechmechia told me.
While she had me at “hello” I could not help but reflect on the journey she and her group have had and the remarkable desire and determination they possess to contribute to change in Canada.
I thought of Jade and her journey.
On February 1, Abrar and the In This Together Team launch their month long campaign asking Canadians and Canadian service providers to support them, and other young people marginalized from their rights, as they reach their hand out to Provincial, Territorial and Federal government to join them in creating a Post Pandemic Youth Mental Health Recovery Plan for Canada.
I ask you to endorse their open letter to the Prime Minister and Premiers by signing the letter at this link https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdvGvkH-tdk6lml4WnO0w-UtASTWO2wQoTL5XBuhpgx18WAEA/viewform?fbzx=7425400348793497837
Our governments have focussed far too much before and during the pandemic on the needs of the economy rather on the needs of individuals. We know plans are underway for an “economic recovery”. A plan for recovery from the trauma of the pandemic, for the recovery of the well being of Canada’s young people with a goal to build back better and ensure that all young people have what they need when they need it in order to thrive is fundamental. We must know by now that the health of our economy depends upon how we take care of each other.
We are In This Together. Young people have reached out to you and under their leadership to move forward together. I invite you to take their hand. For more information on the campaign visit https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jG88qQY0VpRlpAxGe6rDoHz0L2c40-WR7ciZFlKw70A/edit#slide=id.gb0fa26c90b_0_0