Thank you for the opportunity to answer that.
It's mentorship. It's wraparound support. Young people come to us from street life, from prison, from gangs. They've been used and abused in those settings, and they're tired, but they don't feel encouraged that they can make it in a system that they feel has always looked down on them. Just having people with lived experience wrap around them and support them and believe in them until they can believe in themselves is what's been working. We call it “lateral empathy”.
Lateral empathy and lateral kindness are the opposite of lateral violence. Lateral violence is a phenomenon that occurs when those in an oppressed group will sometimes turn on one another. We're changing that narrative to where it's the people who are helping one another.
There is no panacea. There is no government or church or treatment centre that will rescue anyone. It's the community. They look after each other. Out of that, we've had incredible success stories.