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The Youth of St. James Town
St. James Town, the high-rise neighbourhood in northeast downtown built during the ’60s for childless urban adults transitioning to the suburbs, has a strong and active youth voice in 2010 thanks to the St. James Town Youth Council.
Formed in September of 2008 after a push from a group of neighbourhood service providers and organizations who wanted to include a youth voice in the community planning and consultation processes, the goal was to gather and empower local youth in one of the country’s most diverse and densely populated neighbourhoods. And here’s the best thing about it: it’s now almost entirely youth driven and operated.
Apart from the stewardship of community coordinator Kate Masson of the Yonge Street Mission, all the ideas and planning for the council’s activities and programs come from the youth themselves, who meet regularly on Friday evenings for executive and general member assemblies at neighbourhood locations such as the Wellesley Community Centre.
The meetings are well attended, engaged, full of fresh ideas, and conspicuously more civil than a Toronto city council or ward resident meeting. The only mild disagreement at an executive member meeting in November was over the equitable distribution of the pizza served at the dinner break.
More recently, the youth council ran its Camp Reality March Break program, a series of activities designed to offer “youths of St. James Town, who are of ages thirteen to eighteen, a chance to explore various career options,” according to seventeen-year-old organizer Chesa Soeandy.
The St. James Town Youth Council in session. Photo by Josh Fullan.
On day two of the camp, a group of twenty gathered in a backroom of the Yonge Street Mission to watch a presentation and talk about possible future career paths inopportunely subtitled, “A Life Lesson with Tiger Woods” (whose accompanying literature was chock full of photos and inspirational quotes from the golfer’s prelapsarian days, e.g., “I like the idea of being a role model. It’s an honour. People took the time to help me as a kid, and they impacted my life. I want to do the same for kids”).
The best part of the March Break camp for Chesa, a first-year U of T student and executive member of the council, was simply participating. “It was just a really great feeling to see something you’ve worked hard for progressing really well,” she said. “And taking part in it was just really fun.” Along with her peers on the council, Chesa spent months brainstorming and planning activities for the March Break camp, which also included a visit to downtown architecture firm Montgomery Sisam and a site tour of one of its current construction projects.
The St. James Youth Council is a stirring model of what can happen when we engage a youth voice in the community process and extend it beyond tokenism. In spite of contrary popular opinion, and in a neighbourhood where their presence was once officially discouraged, youth in St. James Town actually want to be called on and have proven they will participate meaningfully.