FST Update
Taylor Massey Youth Launch Web Site
Ellen Curtis, who co-ordinates the Crescent Town Youth Service Network for FST’s Community and Neighbourhood Development program, has helped young people find a new voice in the Taylor Massey community.
FST's Ellen Curtis joins from left: Tahlima Huq, Zakiul Haque, Ellen Curtis (Co-ordinator, Crescent Town Youth Service Network), Ashif Ahmed and Mehraz Haque.Ellen spearheaded efforts to have a group of local youths launch a neighbourhood website featuring images, updates and news for the community. The site was officially launched in early November.
The web initiative was part of a project known as Be That Role Model, which began late last year through the Neighbourhood Youth Alliance. More than 20 youth were part of the project. It also included a mentoring and skills initiative, as well as a theatre group, which dramatized the findings of a report on neighbourhood youth issues and needs. The project was funded by the City of Toronto and the Ontario Trillium Foundation. Check out www.yellinks.ca for the latest scoop.
FST Celebrates Families
Get out your 2011 calendar and mark Monday, Feb. 21. That’s the date of Ontario’s next Family Day holiday. And you can join Family Service Toronto in celebrating the diversity of families across the city. We want to showcase your family. Share your picture with us through the photo gallery on our Family Day Toronto website and tell us your story of what family means to you. FST believes all families should be valued.
Our inclusive definition of family is “two or more people, whether living together or apart, related by blood, marriage, adoption or commitment to care for one another.” If you support this inclusive definition of family, let us know! Endorse our definition by going to the Family Day Toronto website and showing your support. Join the movement at www.familydaytoronto.org.
Poverty Reduction: Key to Economic Recovery
Laurel Rothman
FST’s Social Reform Unit, which leads the national Campaign 2000 coalition, continues to work hard to bring public and political attention to the challenge of child and family poverty. Over the last few months Campaign 2000 partners have met with more than 100 MPs seeking federal action on poverty and support for two important private member’s bills currently under debate in Ottawa: Bill C-545 promoting a poverty reduction act, and Bill C-304 to develop a national affordable housing strategy.
On Nov. 24, Campaign 2000 released the 2010 National Report Card on Child and Family Poverty at a press conference on Parliament Hill. Laurel Rothman, FST’s Director of Social Reform, joined former Liberal health minister Monique Begin at the event where she noted that Canada’s child poverty rate was 9.1 per cent in 2008, and 9.4 per cent for all Canadians. This is the most recent data from Statistics Canada – but the poverty rate today is likely higher due to the recession.
At a breakfast meeting with MPs and community partners the following day speakers noted the impact that growing up in poverty has on poor health. Dr. Lindy Sampson (Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario) and Dr. Michael Rachlis (University of Toronto) discussed how poverty is strongly associated with a higher incidence of chronic and acute illness and injuries.
For more information on how poverty affects children’s health, and to add your voice to the call for action against poverty, look for the online verson of the 2010 report card at www.campaign2000.ca.
Reflections
Megan Green, left, shares a moment
with DKS Manager Laurie Chesley
Megan Green, 26, recently completed a one-year internship as a counsellor with FST’s David Kelley LGBTQ & HIV/AIDS Counselling Services. In January 2011, she returns to her Ottawa home where she begins a contract as counsellor and community worker with Family Service Ottawa. Megan, who holds a Masters of Social Work degree from Ottawa’s Carleton University, offered the following reflections on her year in Toronto.
I was the first intern to be placed in the David Kelley Internship Project, which is aimed at providing clinical training and skills for working with LGBTQ communities. The goal is to prepare the intern to return to a pre-arranged agency and participate in a change process to expand programming and the agency’s capacity to work with LGBTQ communities.
I would describe my year as a complete success. In fact, my FST colleagues jokingly (and lovingly) referred to me as “Sponge” because I was so keen to soak up as much as possible in my 525,600 minutes on the job. However, the opportunity provided much more than learning new clinical skills and giving me practical experience.
I had my first real sense of doing the work and having my own practice. I began to thread together knowledge and theory with lived experience and clinical tools to create the fabric for the kind of counsellor I want to be. What stood out for me most was moving from an academic framework to a real-world setting, where I could understand how certain communities can be marginalized. A new passion has erupted from this experience, fuelling my return to Ottawa and my motivation to be an agent of change. The notion of David Kelley’s roots being grounded in a program that was created for the community by the community stands strong with-in me – in a world that is largely heterocentric, we need queer service provision by queer service providers.
It was a symbiotic relationship; everyone benefited. I left David Kelley Services transformed, more skilled, and with purpose. DKS had an extra staff member for a year. And now, Family Service Ottawa will reap the benefits of both my personal and professional journey. For more information on available internships please visit: www.familyservicetoronto.org/programs/dks/internship.html.
Where's Waldo?
Family Service Toronto received international exposure this fall as several vacationing staff members showed off a new bandana featuring the agency’s logo: For People. For Change. The FST logo was seen in Mexico, Sweden, Copenhagen, Berlin, Prague and the Greek island of Santorini in the Mediterranean. But the prize for most creative display went to Waldo Wang, network administrator for FST’s IT department. On a trip to his native China, he draped the bandana on the mascot for the International World Expo in Shanghai.
The bandana contest was part of the agency’s fundraising campaign for the United Way. Staff paid $5 for the bandana and sent digital images of the scarf in various places. The photos were posted to an online image gallery. The contest raised close to $300, which was part of a staff fundraising campaign that netted $35,000 for United Way Toronto. •
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