Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for this opportunity.
I'm from the Broadway Neighbourhood Centre. I'm going to start by giving you a brief overview of what we do there.
We're located in the heart of Broadway, in the core. There are prominent gangs in the area. There are a number of social issues and poverty which we contend with on a regular basis. The centre provides a drop-in centre for young youth and a food bank, as well as a number of other programs.
My focus is the Just TV program. I coordinate a gang prevention and intervention program based out of the Broadway Neighbourhood Centre. Our target demographic is youth between the ages of 16 and 24. Just TV was designed to provide youth with an opportunity to express themselves through multimedia in a safe and creative environment as an alternative to negative influences such as gangs or drugs.
Participants of Just TV engage in all facets of the audio-video industry. We work with youth to give them skill sets. We try to draw them in through the hook of technology. Many of our youth are interested in music videos. It's not specifically a music program; however, that seems to be the draw. They can create whatever they want, as long as it's appropriate and is not encouraging negative behaviour.
That's not to say they can't talk about their experiences. Youth do talk about their experiences in gangs and with drugs, but they talk about the negative aspects or how it has impacted them. Music lyrics are a socially acceptable way for youth to talk to their peers about their experiences. It's often not acceptable to talk just in a general conversation about their feelings when their friend gets shot. But if they're going to create music, it's acceptable, especially in the hip-hop genre. We find that it is quite therapeutic.
Videos that the youth have created discuss issues such as poverty, racism, gang involvement, and substance abuse. We offer a stimulating, positive, and encouraging environment, and we hope to foster in our participants a sense of belonging to something greater than themselves, which is known to reduce the likelihood of gang participation. We give young people a voice when otherwise they might not feel that they have one. We have a film festival at the end of each year to which they can invite their social workers, their probation officers, and their family members. This is often an avenue for these young people to share how they're feeling, when otherwise they wouldn't be able to express it.
We put out 500 DVDs a year with all of the work the youth have created. These go out to other organizations by which young people might be influenced. So the body of work they're creating is aimed toward other youth, to share the stories and talk about.... One of our videos, for instance, is called Caught Up. It was done by three gang members talking about getting caught up in the gang life and being in and out of jail. So it's quite powerful.
Thus our program connects with those who might otherwise slip through the cracks, who don't fit into the sports programs or the homework clubs, and who maybe aren't engaged in the school.
Given the demographic that we work with, it is as I said a prevention-intervention program. Some of our youth are at high risk of joining gangs. This might mean that they're affected by poverty and unemployment, that they have dropped out of school, that they're gang-affiliated, maybe in such a way as having a family member who's gang-involved. The reality is that some young people are born into gangs. When I say born into gangs, I mean that their family members are already quite gang-involved, and so they're surrounded by it from the time they're young.
Many of our youth have touched the justice system, whether or not they've been convicted of an offence. Almost 50% report having been in a gang—actually 44%—and 77% say that there are gangs in the areas in which they live.
If there's a lack of social programming and a lack of opportunities and draws, you can only imagine what it's like to leave your house every day and contend with the draw of joining the gang. There's definitely more drawing in of youth to criminal activity and some of those negative influences.
In 2007 the National Crime Prevention Centre, in its “Youth Gang involvement: What Are the Risk Factors”, cited the following as “the most important risk factors for gang involvement”, and I quote them: negative influences in the youth's life, limited attachment to the community, overreliance on anti-social peers, poor parental supervision, alcohol and drug abuse, poor educational or employment potential, and a need for recognition and belonging.
We try to find a place where the youth can feel they belong, and even if some of the youth remain gang-involved but two nights a week are off the streets and in an environment where they can be themselves for a while, we feel that we've been successful. We've seen a number of successes, such as youths receiving film grants through the work they have created, such as seeing youths leave the gang. Just the fact that we have youth from rival gangs at times attending the program at the same time and seeing each other as individuals rather than as opposing groups is a success.
As my focus today on how we can better equip ourselves to address the issue of organized crime, I've picked one thing. I believe in prevention and intervention and I believe it's key. One of the challenges I see with pro-social programming is that there is a lack of funding or the funding is limited. By the time we really polish what we're doing and find that we're being effective—maybe at that three-year mark—we're scrambling for funding again. By the time we've trained our staff so that they're very effective, they need to seek employment elsewhere, because the funding has ended.
I've seen less competition between community program groups and more working together, trying to share what they've learned, encouraging each other to find funding, and helping each other out. There are a number of good programs out there, but I believe we need to expand the programming. If pro-social community-based street-level programming were offered for ten years, or re-evaluated at the three-year mark and if successful renewed for another three years, we could be much more effective.
Thank you.