I'll start and Mr. Emmanuel will finish.
My name is Devon Jones. I'm a schoolteacher with the Toronto District School Board. I work in the Jane and Finch corridor. I've done so for some time. I'm essentially assigned staff who looks at issues around public safety as they relate to gun violence in youth. I'm also the founding director of the Youth Association for Academics, Athletics, and Character Education. The acronym is YAAACE.
Over the years, YAAACE has provided infrastructure around family support, employment and training, learning and education, case management, public safety, academics and expanded opportunities in athletics.
Canada summer jobs are conducive for us twofold. Firstly, we get a chance to hire young people and provide them with opportunities they wouldn't normally have. A case in point is the current executive director of YAAACE, who is also a professor at Laurier. His first job was through this initiative.
The efficacy of this program is obvious. We get a chance to hire a number of young people who are themselves from the community. They come to the program and then serve as mentors, teachers and instructors. Chris, for example, worked this summer in the capacity of a student teacher, working with hundreds of youth over the course of the summer. The efficacy of the program speaks for itself.
The program is also amazing because we get a chance to provide kids from one of the poorest communities in the country with opportunities for recreational programming and school through the community school initiative, which is a program we run with the Ministry of Education. We provide them with this opportunity that they wouldn't normally be able to afford.
Through the TDSB, we have certified teachers that we can use to address this gap in achievement. We can provide this ecosystem that provides young people with a viable alternative to guns and gangs.
The program, for us, makes a lot of sense. The efficacy speaks for itself. The only suggestion I would make is, firstly, that the program become year-round. Secondly, like the first speaker said, the duration should be somewhat longer.