[REX]

As we invite you to share how youth work has shaped you, we’re highlighting findings from the Ontario Youth Sector Compass, a research project exploring the experiences of young people and youth workers across Ontario. We sought to understand what supports help young people thrive, and what youth workers need to do their jobs in healthy, sustainable ways.

As part of this project, we asked over 350 youth workers: What does youth work mean to you? These insights from youth workers in Southwestern and Central Ontario describe youth work as providing wraparound supports.

These reflections highlight that youth work involves both meeting immediate needs and helping young people grow over the long term. It’s about being flexible, responsive, and committed to supporting youth in multiple areas of their development.

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[Deleted User]

What does this have to do with Youth Work? You might wonder from the title. I wasn’t aware myself that Youth Work was what I was doing after I completed my undergraduate studies in maybe the most colorless, depressing, uninspiring winter of my life—December 2022. It had been five years since I left home and had not returned… I digress. The winter was brutal; rural Ontario is brutal. Being Black in rural Ontario is having to question whether you are literally invisible or human.

As an African, I storytell by digressing.

As the ancestors would say: “Allow me. Let me land.”

It was my first time ever in my life going to a makeshift slaughterhouse for my forensic science practice exam. Of course, I was the only Black person. Do not ever call me BIPOC—but that population was not there either. The instructor quickly affirmed that it was indeed just goat blood and horse hair in the makeshift crime scenes we had to examine, wished us good luck, and split us into groups. Before I knew it, we were hopping into our bunny suits in our assigned groups. My crew quickly gathered their notebooks and split themselves away from me.

For a second, I had one of those moments where I had to check with myself and confirm: Is this actual reality? Did I do anything wrong? Do I smell bad? Do I look too fat in this bunny suit? Aye.

Nonetheless, I gathered myself to re-engage. They all—I do not want to say acted—ignored me, looked at me, and moved further away while the instructor watched. I attempted nothing—I was left alone to do the group assignment in that smelly, dark, isolating slaughterhouse, emotionally and physically isolated even among my peers and prospective fellow graduates. The following week, I received my grades for my midterm: I averaged 27%, having scored a 0 in my group assignment. The instructor lectured me about my incompetency in front of the entire class. Seven weeks into my learning in Canada, I stopped attending school and failed my entire first semester. Unknowingly, that was my first taste of structural racism—prepared like a table before me by my peers, my instructor, and the institution. I was kicked out of the Forensic Science program. We need more Black people in Forensics. I am tired of this.

I digress. After battling depression, anxiety, imposter syndrome, and other challenges—and changing my major four times—I landed in Sociology. For the first time, I reverted back to my heart. I am a ladden, maddened Social Scientist, repeatedly hit by waves of blatant oppression simply because I am an African woman, Black. This is my exhausting story.

But four years later, I was able to advocate for students—Black students just like me. International, Canadian, hurt, grieving—my pain and grief turned into passion and boldness to advocate. Advocate for Nneka (alias), who was randomly kicked out of her room by her landlord at 3:00 am because she had family coming over and could no longer keep her lease. Or Reshawn, who I found crying outside a Chatime near campus because he swore four police cars had been following him all week—and I had to explain why. There is Mikayla, Adanna, Justine, Will. Of course, these are aliases, but I saw myself in them. None of us came from the same ethnic background, country, or faith.

So I laid my life down and advocated for Black youth in student bodies, DEI offices, and through my platform, now resting as “Black in Ontario” with Black Lives Matter Nogojiwanong. I did advocacy to empower Black youth for two years—without a job, in horrible health, in ideation of not wanting to live.

But I cannot help it when it comes to Black youth from everywhere, because I see myself, your younger sibling, your uncle, your mum.

Why we hoard furniture. Why we keep frozen cooked meat in old ice cream containers.

Unspoken things that have journeyed me here as a Youth Engagement Lead at YouthREX, doing exactly what my pain turned into—purpose. Centering Black youth.

I have empathy—infinitely—for Black youth.

 

 

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[Gary A]

The Anti-Hero’s Intervention

The air on the Finch West bus was thick with the humid promise of a Toronto summer evening in 2006. Our anti-hero stood near the rear exit, his gaze soft but steady as he watched a group of teenagers board at Jane Street. They moved as one organism, loud, kinetic, a jumble of nervous energy and bravado. One of them, a lanky kid who couldn’t have been more than sixteen, bumped hard into an older man, knocking the man’s newspaper to the floor. “Watch it,” the man grumbled, glaring. The kid squared his shoulders, his friends snickering behind him. “You got a problem?”

The tension coiled instantly. It was a scene our anti-hero had witnessed a dozen times, a trivial slight ready to ignite into something much worse. This was the precipice, the exact moment where a single, egoic choice could alter a life’s trajectory. Before the man could retort, our anti-hero stepped forward, his presence calm and unassuming. He bent down, picked up the newspaper, and handed it to the man with a nod. Then he turned to the teenager. He didn’t lecture or challenge. He just met his eyes. “Tough day?” he asked, his voice low and even. The kid was thrown off. The script in his head didn’t have a line for this. “What’s it to you?” he mumbled, the aggression draining from his posture, replaced by a flicker of confusion. “Just that you look like you’re carrying a lot,” our anti-hero said, holding his gaze for a second longer. “I get it.” He offered a small, almost imperceptible nod, then moved away, giving them space. The moment was over. The conflict was defused. It wasn’t magic; it was a methodology. For our anti-hero, peace had never been a passive wish. It was an active, teachable skill, and its foundation was the simple, profound act of seeing the person in front of him.

Our anti-hero’s own story was forged in the crucible of otherness, and unbeknownst to him, this engagement was a precursor to his future work with a youth gang exit project not far from where this all took place. He’d grown up in a different city, one where the chasm between small town and big city tipping points was always a whisper’s echo away. He’d seen friends treated as problems to be solved rather than as people with potential. His own path could have easily mirrored theirs, but a series of almost supernatural interventions, combined with athletics, music, and the kindness of pale-skinned mentors, had changed everything. That experience became the cornerstone of his work, crystallizing into core principles that drove his not-for-profit leaders, Tao; the hunger for respect was a primary human driver, while power imbalances are inevitable, abuse of power and accepting powerlessness are choices, and finally influence and power is not for personal gain, but to empower communities and the people who call their community home.

When the time came for him to work in the field, he was denied. But not long after, he was given his chance with an employment opportunity. He took the opportunity and lived in his car until his first pay, showering at a nearby community center during morning swim, then moving into a hotel/motel when he could afford it, and moving between motels and sleeping curled up in a driver’s seat tucked away in a plaza or side street for months until he could afford a place to live. But remember, being powerless can be a choice to some. He was lucky to be one of the ‘some,’ so he was not powerless, he was alchemy to power he would later use to inspire a mother who couldn’t pay rent, the participant who needed groceries, or the young man who needed emergency dental work. Our anti-hero never forgot those struggles, and knew for some people what he had the privilege of calling struggle was their harsh reality, and it was during these cold winter nights, his heart was forged to be present until a young person was an older person and let him know “thank you, but I got it from here.”

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[Kathe]

In This Is Youth Work: Voices from the Frontlines of Ontario’s Youth Sector, the YouthREX team showcased findings from seven focus groups with 58 frontline youth workers in five cities across Ontario.

Youth workers described having a professional identity tied to their personal identity because they identify with the young people they work with. Their professional identities as youth workers were “not separated or detached” but part of who they are – as this quote from a youth worker in Central Ontario exemplifies:

• This reply was modified 5 months ago by  Kathe Rogers.
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