Almaz Reda is a Settlement Councillor for Working Women Community Centre and has been working in the Jane-Finch community, first as a volunteer than as paid staff for over twenty years. She initially lived at 15 Tobermory and then moved to the Glen Garden Housing Co-op in 1997 and making her current home in Richmond Hill. Almaz is passionate about the community and believes that everyone has the right to live in a safe and affordable community. As of September 2019, Almaz continues to work as a Settlement Councillor and volunteer with Caring Village.
Please tell me a bit about yourself and how you came to live in the Jane and Finch community.
I was originally from Eritrea Africa but grew up in Ethiopia and got married. Later, due to some political issues in my country, I left my husband and moved to a refugee camp in Kenya. I got accepted into Canada, went to Calgary and I went to university to study business administration before coming to Toronto. I had friends in Toronto so they told me to come to Toronto and you’ll get a job because it’s a big city, so I came by myself and my son was in the United States with my family, so I came to see Toronto and I decided to stay. I came to Jane-Finch and I was looking for a house and employment. I needed a place to stay and I applied for government housing, so they gave me 15 Tobermory in Jane-Finch. This was in the early 1990’s. In Toronto, Jane-Finch, I have been able to find work I am passionate about and continued my education while working to get my Masters from York University.
What was your first involvement doing either volunteer work or paid work in Jane-Finch?
When I came to Jane-Finch, right away, I met people at community programs like Ruth Morris. I told her that I wanted to volunteer because I just came, and I am looking for work. She said, “Come on in and volunteer at FOCUS”, and I started volunteering full-time doing anti-drug and anti-alcohol promotion including accounting for her organization. We used to go to the community and the local schools doing presentations and signing petitions to stop alcohol advertising. I also participated in writing research projects. In addition, Ruth was doing a Co-op Community Project to start up some businesses for residents and she was helping them to write a business plan. So, I said, “I can do a business plan”, as that was my field of study and I did help to write the business plans. Then, she gave me a part time job to continue doing the accounting for Rittenhouse. That was an organization she managed helping people in prison and those coming out of prison. She did educational circles on healing justice and non-violence. While I did the accounting, I also did some auditing because at that time, they didn’t require you to have a chartered accountant auditor for small organizations where funding is mainly from fundraising.
Through my work with her I got an opportunity to meet all the organizations in Jane-Finch. I used to attend their meetings as part of my job with her. I met many great community leaders like Margarita Mendez from Jane/Finch Centre, leaders from organizations such as Jane Finch Legal, Black Creek Health Centre, Parks and Recreation, Seneca College, York University, Working Women Community Centre and much more. At that time, there was an issue where people weren’t getting the services they needed on time because agencies didn’t have the funding to coordinate services to the community. As a newcomer to Toronto myself, I have struggled to find help and I used to talk with Ruth about access/service issues. We always brainstormed ideas to enhance access and ensure residents got the support they needed on time. In all community and agency meetings, issues like this were always on the agenda for discussion. Many times, people talked about the need for advocacy, residents’ complaints about coordinated service, how to approach gaps in service, how to support each other, challenge each other and working collectively to address community issues such as housing, education and poverty, etc. After some discussion, everyone agreed to coordinate community services and work together. It was then, the idea for Yorkgate Alliance was born. No one planned it but it just happened. I thought that it was a great idea and I volunteered to coordinate it. Yorkgate Alliance was where we coordinated all the organizations services in Jane-Finch including the Yorkgate Mall, The Toronto Public Health, the local library, local faith groups, local agencies, Seneca College and York University. Yorkgate Mall gave us an office space (where York University is now) as they were part of the group at that time. The front office space was given to us for free since the Yorkgate Alliance established around 1992 to 1999/2001.
The purpose of the Alliance was to coordinate community services so that no one had to struggle to find where to go for help, to eliminate service duplication and coordinate seamless service to all residents. This was also good for local agencies to work together on advocacy initiatives and complement each others’ services. As a result, clients don’t have to be confused or frustrated looking for help. When clients are directed to another agency, the agencies would work together instead of sending the people here and there.
As a volunteer coordinator, I had to make sure we had a monthly meeting and if there were advocacy issues, I made sure everyone got the information. Agencies were scheduled daily at the space to present their information and services to the community. Community meetings, advocacy matters, and trainings were coordinated. Jane/Finch Centre, Seneca college and the Firgrove Community Ministry played a great role in making the Alliance work. I was always supported by them. It worked so well, bringing the agencies together, coordinating services and more agencies joined as a result. The Yorkgate Alliance always worked with other local networks such as the local Executive Directors meeting or the Network of Community Based Organizations.
At this time, and from your perspective, what issues were residents facing in the community?
Around 1991/92/93, poverty and unemployment were big issues. When you look for a job and mentioned that you are from Jane-Finch, obviously you may not get a job and even a volunteer position. Even me, I was graduated with a degree, yet it was not easy to get a job. I remember that time, the country was going through difficult times. I think initially, Toronto was good, booming and there was a lot of work but then it became not so much. It had gotten worse for Jane and Finch and it got even worse when Mike Harris got elected.
The other one is school issue. We had so many school issues. Kids being suspended, school not being supportive of parents and a lot of domestic violence. If you try to challenge them about why your child was suspended, why your child is not supported, why kids are failing, you will get no where. You could be labelled as a troublemaker. There were many parents that were banned and not allowed to come to the school because they had an argument with the school. This was around 1993/94 where we had a lot of school issues and police issues with young people. Parents were in trouble, frustrated and didn’t know what to do.
At that time, we used to do a lot of outreach for Ruth’s organization and work with other community partners to organize retreats for residents. We took residents and used to go out of town – it was so beautiful; I’ll never forget that. We went with our children to the retreat and talked about non-violence. The learning was about how you struggle, how you advocate for yourself and how you challenge the system in a non-violent way. We also learned about stories from all over the world that challenged oppression with non-violence. I learned a lot and I think those learnings influenced the way I looked at things for better.
During that time, there was too much violence such as domestic violence or issues with police, especially when it involves youth. People didn’t know what to do. The discussion was, okay – why don’t we support parents, maybe focus on mothers because they are the parents and primary care givers at home. Then, the issue of domestic violence and how to deal with it. When you have domestic violence, the wife is dealing with abuse and it is the kids that suffer the most. So, people were very clear that “violence does not happen in a vacuum”. It has multiple layers and people need to work together to address the issue with multiple approaches.
The community discussion progressed in many ways and many initiatives started or were supported out of those discussions. For example, the discussion about bringing Seneca College to Jane-Finch, where we advocated, and Seneca opened their campus at Yorkgate Mall. We advocated to have the big campus, but we were not disappointed with the one we had. It was a pleasure working with Leolyn during all those years. When Seneca College opened, I was a member of the advisory council for the campus and served as a member and a chair for many years. We advocated to bring programs to help newcomers and women to get a college education. We advocated to bring York University programs to Yorkgate Mall for years and there was a positive outcome regarding that. The Caring Village & Seneca was involved in the TD Community Engagement Centre when it first started, and I served as a member of the governance for few years.
How did governments or influential people respond to the issues in the community?
Nothing! We had campaigns, prevention of alcohol promotion work, the social justice work, the retreats & the healing justice circles were not supported as they deserved to be supported. Students were educated in the schools about healing justice and supported with other community activities but that was not acknowledged by the government accordingly. There was no change – everything was the same. I remember, we had supportive people from the local schools and the North York Board of Education at that time who worked with us in bringing the issues forward. I mean, when we do advocacy work, there were school officials who supported our work including principals like at Shoreham, Brookview and Westview. While one appreciates the support of staff from the Board, it was not at a systemic level. When you have good teachers and good people working together, it is great and you can accomplish so many things but, we need a system change in order to resolve the school issues we have. That is why so much was done but I don’t see many issues completely resolved. Still we have the same issues as we had back then.
Besides the school, we also had so many issues with the banks. They wouldn’t open accounts for people or newcomers for different reasons. The community agencies did so much advocacy with a couple banks such as the Royal Bank and the TD Bank. I think things got a little better with the banks today. The school, not having a job, even hanging out at the mall was a big issue in Jane-Finch. Some young people were not allowed to go around the mall and being accused of many minor things. So many of them were mistreated, charged and band from the Yorkgate Mall. Residents and community agencies advocated to change that for years.
Tell me about the Caring Village – how did it start and what were some of the accomplishments.
Discussions at The Yorkgate Alliance and other community groups or agency meetings was always focused on how to meet the needs of the community. Residents of Jane-Finch were always at the table of every meeting and participated in trying to get some solutions to some of the issues. These issues discussed were big and some were beyond us. Family issues, violence, school issues, poverty and the focus was on how we contribute a little bit in addressing these issues. So, from those discussions, people agreed that we had to build the capacity of the community and community residents. The parents, the residents themselves have to actually lead the discussion and propose solutions to the issues. Capacity building motivates people, encourages people, nurtures people and then it gives communities members the tools to do things for themselves. People don’t want to feel powerless in their own lives, don’t have to be abused by anyone – it doesn’t matter who that is. So, that’s when it was decided to organize an advocacy group to engage residents and work on these issues. There was no funding to do this work and most of the agencies funding was restricted. So, a group of residents and agencies continued meeting to prioritize some issues that they would like to focus on. At that moment, the school issues and violence (domestic or community) were very bad and the group decided to focus on promoting non-violence through education and service provision. People thought these two issues (issues in local schools and violence – domestic or community) were related and could be addressed at the same time.
The idea was that well informed and supported parents would be able to help themselves and deal with their children’s schooling. Also, well informed residents make healthy communities. It was then, the concept of The Caring Village came to emerge in Jane-Finch around 1993. It was a unique initiative embedded in the concept in community collaboration. It brought together community residents working alongside professionals who donated their time, e.g. volunteers who lived or worked in the local community and who brought to the table a broad cross-section of skills and competencies reflecting a range of backgrounds and experiences.
The initial group members including residents, school officials, local agencies, the police and Parks and Recreation had several meetings and trainings. The group believed that they needed to learn more about how other communities dealt with community issues like Jane-Finch and that would help them in the development of a plan. Around that time, I am not sure what year, there was a conference in Toronto and the speaker was a professor from Chicago who is known in his writings and research about the importance of parental/community involvement in addressing school issues. Some of the group members attended the conference and that reinforced the idea of promoting non-violence through education where parents and community residents are engaged in a meaningful way. Having community leadership would build the capacity of residents and promote a healthy community. It was then, the initiative called “The Caring Village” was formally established.
The Caring Village was made up of a large group of residents, local agencies, the local schools such as Shoreham and Brookview. And, of course, the Jane/Finch Centre took the leadership role in having this conversation, setting up meetings and other supports as needed. Later on, Seneca College, the university, Public Health and faith groups came on board. The residents, Margarita from Jane/Finch Centre, Lester Green from Parks and Recreation, Fran Chaplin from the North York Board of Education were the champions of the initiative, the Caring village.
Fran Chaplin was the guidance head in the North York Board of Education, and she was very supportive. As a result, the local schools participated fully in all activities. All the members of the group were so motivated and driven and the residents were very happy to see that. The Caring Village started as an organization – but operated more like an advocacy group. After a little while, the group developed terms of reference and objectives of the activities that the organization planned to have. The focus was to promote non-violence through education and service provision. With violence, it was meant all forms of violence whether it is domestic violence or community violence. The plan was to provide a positive environment that nurtures people with ideas of non-violence and supportive services that exemplify a model of a caring community. It was very clear that residents had to lead the Caring Village, and everyone would work together to make the vision a reality. The idea was community leadership will give residents a sense of ownership and purpose and in turn that will create a healthy community.
Initially, the Caring Village didn’t have funding and the group was working on getting funding. At that time, I was a part time accountant and full-time community volunteer. After a little while, they got money from the Trillium Foundation for three years in around 1995/1996 and I was hired as a coordinator. The Jane/Finch Centre was the trustee for the money. Through this, I coordinated the Caring Village in 1997, 98 and 99, and one additional year was funded by the North York Board of Education. However, the funding was small, and it was not enough to cover the program expenses and staff. So, I was hired as a Community Development Worker for the Jane/Finch Centre and part of my job was assigned to work with Caring Village. I also worked for Working Women Community Centre (WWCC) part time since 1997 and located at the Jane/Finch Centre. Though, I was working for different agencies at the same time, it has never an issue for me. My roles as a worker complemented each other and the organizations I work with were very supportive. Saying that, there was a lot of times I used to give volunteer time to complete Caring Village activates and I was so happy to do it. When the three-year grant was up, I continued to work part time for Jane/Finch Centre and part time as a Settlement Worker with the WWCC. However, the Jane/Finch Centre continued to allocate a few hours to the Caring Village and that was helpful to me to continue as a coordinator. A lot of times, I continued to complete my duties as a volunteer.
As a coordinator, I chaired monthly meetings, prepared the agenda and did other tasks as assigned by the group. We didn’t have funding to hire anyone, but all members of the Caring Village shared the responsibilities of all the activities of the organization. Being one of the members, I had the opportunity to be able to shape some of the discussions on the table as a resident who experienced difficulties in the community. I suffered a lot and had some negative experiences relating to school issues. One time, my son was very young, grade 3, and he was laughing at the shoes of another student. The teacher told me that he was disrupting the class; he laughs all the time and I told her that he likes laughing. I sometimes got upset about it and I apologized for that. She continued and said, he even laughed when there was a kid, a child who had on old shoes and he looked at them and he laughed. “This kid is very bad”, the teacher told me. I said, okay, I have to respect the teacher and I didn’t want to argue – I didn’t say anything. “Are you a single mom?” the teacher asked me. I told her “yes”. “Oh, that explains how your son is behaving”. I will never forget what she said.
At that time, I was kind of new to Toronto and I kept quiet. I didn’t know what to say. I actually didn’t know what she meant by that because I was new to the community. So, when she says, single mom, I was married and divorced, so yes, I was a single mom. She said it explains my son’s behaviour and I didn’t know what she meant by that. I didn’t relate to what a single mom means in this Jane-Finch community. I also didn’t think a professional teacher would say that to insult a parent. I was confused and later on, I was upset when I knew what she meant by that. I was very upset and that was very wrong. You don’t have to be a single mom to have your child misbehave. A child can misbehave for whatever reason – he can be silly, but it has no relationship to my being a single mom. Sometimes, she took my son out of the classroom and he used to sit in the corridor – it was his punishment for laughing. One day, I went into the school and I see a child sitting in the middle of the corridor and I thought, what is going on with this kid? I saw it was my son and I said, “What are you doing”? He was suspended so he was told to sit in the middle of the corridor. I cannot forget that vision and why it was done. These are some of the issues I had and much more yet not being told. I always had difficulty understanding why the education system deals with children and parents that way. Sometimes I think I should say this is with some families as I don’t believe this treatment is across the Board or in every community.
This lived experience has been a drive for me wanting to advocate for a systemic change in education that is respectful of all children and their parents. I wanted to fight for the change I want to have for my self. For me, the Caring Village was a venue to constructively advocate and challenge the system. Also, the Caring Village has never been just a program. It was much more than that. Everybody was clear from day one that it is not going to be a program that runs to address a few people’s issues. It was a forum to do and promote advocacy for systemic change. When one advocates to help 20 or 30 people, you can not expect to bring systemic change that is going to resolve the issues of all. Lasting change can only happen when you organize and inspire people to imagine a positive change that we all want and deserve.
As a Coordinator of the Caring Village, I invited several organizations to join and many of them have contributed a lot. I have to say that along side with the residents of Jane-Finch, Toronto Public Health, Seneca College at Yorkgate Mall, Parks & Recreation at Driftwood, CLASP at York, Black Creek CHC, Jane/Finch Centre, members of Firgrove Learning Centre and Faculty of Education at York have contributed to the Caring Village immensely. Even if I tried, I cannot do justice in accounting all their supports and efforts. I just want to take this opportunity to acknowledge their contributions. All members that I didn’t mention gave so much of their time, amazingly. The Toronto Public Health was instrumental in supporting parents to help their children. They did workshops on how to discipline children, positive parenting and it was done in a sensitive, non-judgmental and supportive way. We had many residents coming with issues, for example, “My child is not listening to me, I don’t want to spank him, so help me to help my child”, kind of issues. They really educated and supported people. Now, the government doesn’t realize that you can only help people from the bottom up, one family at a time if you want to have a safe and healthy community. I don’t think the Toronto Public Health is allowed to work with families like before. Even the police, they were part of the Caring Village in a positive way – Gino and others at 31 Division really worked with us in terms of helping families. They used to do information session for residents and conflict mediation with families. That’s where they started this program in Jane-Finch, at Parks and Recreation, the police playing basketball with the young kids and they both get to know each other as people, not as an officer coming to enforce the law. Lester Green at Parks and Recreation was very passionate and supportive of the youth in our community.
During the years, we always promoted parental involvement in the schooling of their children and engaged residents in all aspects of our community activities. The Caring Village believes that it takes a village to raise a child and parents are the first teachers and nurturers of their children. No one can help my child in my absence. Parents have to be part of the solution in helping their own children. When you talk about suspension, kids are having problems, people think – okay, lets do programs for kids. No, it doesn’t work that way. What do we know about the life of the child or his problems? For that reason, we need to really involve parents to know how to help children including their families. This is the message the Caring Village always tried to get across to the larger community.
The Caring Village always involved a large number of residents, tenant associations and community groups in all activates. Residents trusted and valued the contribution of the Caring Village. It was exiting to see residents being involved in activities, advocacy, meetings, forums, school councils and programs initiatives. I participated in the school council of many of the local schools for years. Often, members of the Caring Village attended school meetings and meetings with parents or residents. Many gave their staff time in providing support and advocacy initiatives. As an organization, it was important to be with parents at the table and I do believe parents appreciated our presence. The local schools were kind of receptive to community services and to community agencies because they realized that was helpful in engaging parents in schools.
Besides education, the Caring Village worked with tenant groups such as Edgeley Village, Jane/Milo and Shoreham tenant groups. We supported advocacy initiatives dealing with maintenance and other issues. In addition, the Caring Village supported initiatives of community agencies that support parents to engage in their children’s learning. One of those programs is the HIPPY program at WWCC. HIPPY is short for Home Instruction for Parents of Pre-school Youngsters. It supports parents with young children under the age of 6. The need for supporting parents of young children was brought to The Caring Village by the resident representatives as they attended our monthly meetings. Then, the request was taken to WWCC. After some time, the WWCC was able to bring a program to support parents in Jane-Finch in 2005. Now, the HIPPY program is provided in different areas of Toronto and serves thousands of families. The Caring Village received many awards in 1997, 1998, 1999 from The Board of Education, Parks and Recreation and other institutions.
All these activities continued without funding until 2006. In 2006, The Caring Village got incorporated as a non-profit organization and got charitable status. This was a great contribution from CLASP at York. At that time, I was elected to the Board of Directors as a chair of the organization. But I continued my previous role coordinating the Caring Village activities. The Board of Directors included individuals from CLASP, York, Black Creek CHC and residents. While the Caring Village has a Board dealing with formal legal matters, all the decisions regarding the programs and activates continued to be decided as always at the monthly meetings in the presence of all members. It was then, the group talked about getting funding to do some programs in the local schools.
Of course, agencies have programs in the schools, but they might not have enough funding to do continuous advocacy and related activities all the time. The leadership of the Jane/Finch Centre was lost due to lack of funding and Margarita was not there any longer. The Public Health also changed their mandate and the police said they didn’t have anybody anymore to do community relations. Similarly, many agencies lost funding and the change of staff or mandate contributed to a shortage of support. There were not many agencies or groups that were able to contribute staff time and that loss was not easy for the Caring Village. Fran Chaplin from the Board of Education passed away awhile before and the support from the Board of Education was not like before. Some schools have participated and supported us, but it was not that core support. So, getting funding seemed critical at that time. The Caring Village continued to support residents in Jane-Finch, but we had to make some changes such as meeting space. We used to go to Yorkgate where Seneca is located. Leolyn Hendricks gave us space to meet instead of the Jane/Finch Centre. It was then that York University showed interest in doing one program to support the local schools. People at the University, by nature of their mandate, wanted to do some educational programs to help students.
Often, when we go to school meetings to do advocacy, we always learn kids are failing and there is no solution for it as Toronto District School Board (TDSB) don’t have enough resources to do more in the schools. For that reason, the idea of a program was discussed, and it was decided to do one. This program will be a model to show how to help kids that are struggling with their learnings. It was clear that the Caring Village’s main focus is overall systemic change, but it was okay to do one program as a model to demonstrate the possibilities. Maybe, a positive outcome will encourage the TDSB to continue providing it for their students on their own. It was then the Promoting Excellence came to exist.
The plan was to address some of the situations confronting marginalized and racialized youth in the local schools especially the lack of academic success experienced by many. Promoting Excellence was targeted at youth struggling with credit accumulation and intended to stem the flow of leaving school early, a persistent issue in local high schools. The program included an in-school mentorship component for high school students and an intensive summer school academic intervention for grade 8 students before they begin Grade 9. This was for students transferred and not promoted to grade nine.
A proposal got submitted and we got the funding from United Way. CLASP, Black Creek CHC, residents and Faculty of Education worked hard to make this program a reality. The first summer, staff were hired to run the summer program at York University and continued to help the students at Westview Secondary school during the year. The Board and the local schools were very cooperative in supporting the summer program. Parents were very happy. Most importantly, the kids were very happy and did so well beyond anyone’s imagination. Students were on time in class, were great and did well in their learnings. They loved the way they were learning; they loved the school and they loved the place they were attending school in the summer which is York University.
The program continued for three years until 2009 when the three-year funding ended. It was a success story and a real demonstration of “All Children Can Learn”. The Caring Village always believed it takes a village to raise a child and this was the testament that our children learned when taught with love, respect and needed support. As always, good programs don’t last long as the funding is always short term. After all, this was a program that requires massive work, a lot of attention/supervision as we were dealing with minor children. Everyone invested a lot of staff time and resources in addition to the funding we had. Without funding and resources, it was not easy to continue. There were no agencies that were willing or had the resources to help. Besides that, running a program without enough resources would put the young children at risk. Also, it compromises the value of the Caring Village which is heavily invested in encouraging resident participation in all aspects of the program and providing activates that are non-judgmental and respectful of participants situations. During the three years, we learned a lot about the resources needed to provide this program. In addition to program expenses, it required a lot of staff support, training and supervision to new staff or volunteers that were involved in the activities. For the newly hired staff or volunteers, it was not easy to expect them to provide service with a value of an organization they just joined or expect them to learn everything in a short time. As a result, it became difficult to continue the program without all those needed supports in place. After all, the program was meant to model and demonstrate the possibilities and the purpose was served. As difficult it was, Promoting Excellence, was discontinued. To my knowledge, the schools continued to have programs to support students and continued to provide summer program similar to what we had.
However, the initial purpose of the Caring Village continues to today and I am still committed to coordinate the Caring Village as a volunteer Board chair. While we don’t have programs and summer activities, the Caring Village continues to promote non-violence through education and meaningful community engagement. There are great residents who continue to give their time to the Caring Village. It will be difficult to mention all the names of those involved but I would like to mention few community leaders like Maryan & Loraine from Firgrove Learning Centre, Monica, Moo Lay, Moo Moo, Saleema, and many members of the Karen community. Lorraine, Maryan and the other members bring some of the values and experience they have back to their community. As members, we advocate on behalf of parents, encourage parents to be involved in their children’s learning, encourage residents to be involved in school council, attend meetings at the Board such as the Board Equity Committees and support tenant groups when asked. We support newcomer communities to be involved in their neighborhood and encourage residents to participate in activities or trainings offered by the city or by agencies. All of these is done by volunteer residents. The whole idea is that we have to engage parents and residents in everything that affects their lives. The changes have to come from them, with them being part of the changes. It does not make sense for somebody else to come in to get justice for them. What makes the Caring Village unique is that it brings out the selflessness and passion for a better world in people. It always attracts those who are passionate about justice and willing to be the change they want to see in their communities. That’s why it has to continue and hope the Caring Community will be a reality one day.
Another exceptional transition program, Advanced Credit Experience (ACE), had its origins in the Caring Village. ACE is a collaborative community initiative built on the foundation of strong relationships between community, school and post secondary institutions. It was an initiative of the Caring Village started in 2004. As mentioned, the Caring Village brought together community residents, representatives of community and social service organizations and academics, administrators of educational institutions to focus on addressing issues which were considered barriers to socioeconomic success by community members. ACE seeks to address one key issue of interest to community residents - their children’s educational success. It was rooted in an understanding that one’s success in post secondary studies had a direct relationship between strong foundational skills and the ability to manage and balance the academic expectations of the post secondary educational environment.
At first, residents and professionals who donated time, i.e. volunteers who lived or worked in the local community came together to write the original ACE proposal for the Trillium Foundation to test the ACE model in the local community. As the proposal was not granted, ACE received in-kind contributions from Seneca College and few students from Westview C. Secondary School attended Seneca College. At the end of their course, feedback from the students and the school was promising. That was the time where I met Pat Saul, (Coordinator of the Westview Partnership in the Faculty of Education). I invited Pat to join the Caring Village as a member and she came because she was at Westview doing similar things. This was a great opportunity to work together and Pat was instrumental in getting in-kind funding from the York University Faculty Association (YUFA). As per discussions in the Caring Village meetings, a committee was set up to look into funding and in-kind donations for the ACE program. I was a member of that committee with Leolyn from Seneca, Pat Soul, community residents and staff from York.
At that moment, an in-kind donation was secured from Seneca and York to send the first official cohort of students (ACE participants) to attend classes’ tuition free but be registered as legitimate college or university students. Westview Centennial Secondary School assigned co-op credits for participating students and allocated a co-op teacher to oversee their activities and facilitated co-op work placements at both Seneca and York.
The program sought to focus on those high school students who lacked the self-confidence or academic focus to consider post secondary as their next step after high school. The intent was to demonstrate through personal experience, that the expectations of post secondary education (PSE) study did not present the insurmountable hurdle that many students assumed. This was frequently the case due to their lack of information about what was involved in PSE; a lack of confidence from their teachers in their ability and the lack of hands-on experience with post secondary from their personal support network. Many ACE students became the first in their family to attend a post secondary institution. As such, ACE was meant to expose students to a college and university experience and prove to them that it was feasible to consider university or college, with a combination of personal effort, mentorship support and academic interventions.
Fifteen years after its inception, The ACE program is run by York University and now involves schools from the TDSB and TCDSB and offers university entrance bursaries from $1,000-$5,000 for students who successfully completed the credit course. I am happy the program is doing well, and it is where it is supposed to be - at a University as that is the mandate and purpose of universities. However, I feel it is important to give credit and acknowledgement to community members in Jane-Finch for their contribution to programs and initiatives like ACE.
What issues are residents facing today and what are the challenges in dealing with those issues?
The issues have gotten worse. The school issues – I remember, like for twenty something years, I was talking about the same issues that are still here. It kind of hurts because the issues are still here. We are talking about suspensions, kids with no support and much more and I don’t believe it is a money issue only, its human will because I have seen it in the Caring Village. We had the Promoting Excellence program and it worked. I recruited those kids – students that had difficulty in school as that was the criteria. The kids did so well learning at York U because they were treated with respect and with care. The teaching was with love without labeling them as failures. Kids never missed a day. They used to walk early in the morning – they were all in that program, on time. This was around 2007. That shows all children can learn or there is no child that doesn’t want to learn. It’s the way we treat the kids that is making them not respond. I am a believer and I say that all the time, we have to change the way we are treating our kids. Its not about money or more programs or activities. We have to change our attitudes towards how we teach them.
The housing issues are not the same as before. The tenant reps are making a positive impact. I see that there is a change in housing, a little bit. Before it was bad. Now, they have maintenance issues but communication with housing may be a little better. However, the luck of housing is a big issue in the city. People are struggling to find a place to stay and rent is so high people cannot afford it anymore.
Speaking about the tenant representatives, the Jane/Finch Centre started the idea of elected tenant representatives, through our community development work. My job at the Centre was to organize residents and part of that included the residents in Shoreham and Driftwood. In meetings, tenants used to be challenged by housing staff and they were unable to talk about their issues or things they wanted to see in their communities. To deal with that, we had a discussion with residents and agreed to have elected members of tenant representatives. They used to meet monthly and discuss community issues. Then, the elected representatives used to take issues of maintenance, eviction, budget and respect for residents to TCHC.
Having elected Tenant Representatives was an issue for housing at the beginning because they were okay having a Tenants Association where people join, stay there as long as they wanted, and they don’t deal with any individual housing issues. The idea was that TCHC didn’t want an organized tenant group to challenge them on individual housing issues. Having elected representatives challenging housing regarding maintenance or other issues in the building was a problem for them. When individuals went to complain about their issues, it was easy for housing to say they don’t have funding, or they will work on it. They were not able to do that with the Tenant Representatives. as we had a monthly meeting that included agencies, housing and the tenant representatives where all housing matters were discussed.
They used to challenge Margarita, Executive Director for the Jane/Finch Centre, about why we were organizing residents and encouraging them to advocate on behalf of everyone. “Why is Almaz doing this?” They wanted to deal with housing issues one on one with tenants and not in a group meeting where the Tenant Representatives were requesting updates. Once we had the representatives, they got used to it and it actually worked well for them. Tenant representatives started asking for more budget for the building and working with the manager to improve their Neighborhoods and I think that convinced housing to accept the idea of elected representatives. Now, tenant representatives are elected in the entire city. However, housing never acknowledged the contribution of the Jane/Finch Centre.
When you think back to living in this community, what are you most proud of and what was the most challenging?
The most challenging were the issues. The same issues we talked about back then are still there. You don’t see progress so you feel tired, you feel like you want to give up, but you can’t give up. Its so stressful and I don’t like that. You see people going through the same thing that we went through and you kind of say, oh my God – why is this happening? Also, the lack of stable funding and government acknowledgement that communities need support in order to be healthy. They give funds for one year then they change the mandate and that is not healthy. These days, the funders themselves come up with a focus for the year. How do they come up with that? Residents and the people who needs the help are supposed to come up with the focus on how to deal with their issues, not the funders. That also complicates things. You have a program that does not meet the needs of residents. That is not how you build healthy communities and support residents to reach their goals in life.
What I’m proud of is that I really love Jane-Finch. I feel safe, I feel like I belong here – this feels to me like home. I love the people – they are so courageous. I admire the selflessness and resilience of the residents of Jane-Finch. I was privileged to be in a position where I have been able to meet many residents and share their challenges. It was and still is an honor to have the trust of people in your community. They have always supported me and stand on my side. I admire all the residents I have ever met for their tireless contribution to their community and their caring heart. Residents volunteer and work along side agencies to better their community. It is not easy to sacrifice your time to bring change for others. When you see this, you learn that volunteering is not just that you have a little time to spare – no, it’s actually being the change you want to see for yourself and your community. In return, this gives you a personal satisfaction, personal growth and purpose in life which is the source of real happiness.
Also, I am always moved by the passion and commitment of people from agencies and other institutions have for the community. I have the opportunity to work with agencies, school officials, people from the university, collage or faith groups and they have always gone above and beyond the call of duty. Sometimes, it is not easy to work for change if you are working in big institutions. It must be difficult to adhere to the mandates of the institutions you work for and also please the community you serve that have different expectations. I was always impressed by the members of the Faculty of Education, especially Don Dippo, Members of CLASP – Glenn, Seneca College – Leolyn, Lester Green and all past and present members of the Caring Village who are too many to mention. They all had unwavering commitment to the issues in the community. I’m glad I have met them because I was inspired by their passion and commitment for a better future. I learned a lot from them, and I always looked up to them.
I also admire my colleagues at the Jane/Finch Centre and the Working Women Community Centre including the several Boards I was part serving as a Member of Board of Directors. They are passionate about what they do and that was an inspiration for me. I always felt my contributions were valued. Working with them and knowing them, gave me meaning as a community worker and selfless. Community work is not a 9 to 5 job. You have to sacrifice your family and your time to do it. I have so many good examples. Everyday, I look back and I look around not very far, and I always have people who inspires me to do better. I am not perfect, and I will not be, but I will always have many people to look up to when I need them. I have to say, I am proud and honored to have an opportunity to contribute to the making of Jane-Finch.