“YG” Reynolds is not your ordinary seventeen-year-old living in Toronto.
For young people like YG Reynolds, what he calls home is different to what the average person would imagine, because 17-years-old, at home he is the man of the house. As only "adult" male in his family, he lives in a small two-bedroom apartment at the intersection of Morningside and Ellesmere, what he likes to call ‘MC’. That tight space, in a tough neighborhood, is where he lives with close-knit family. That's what he calls home. His family consists of his little sister, and hardworking mother, who hasn’t found any solution to keep her son “YG” off the streets. YG chooses to ‘provide’ for his family, he does the means to do whatever he needs to do due to his father’s absences.
Poverty in this area is one of the motivators for youth like YG to get involved with organized crime and gang affiliation that is prominent in his environment. This consisted of him joining a gang in order to provide for his family at the age of 12. His gang ties we already deeply rooted from when YG was a child, because his father has been a part of the Blood faction since before Reynolds was born. Between living below the poverty line, in a single parent home, being gang affiliated, and still a minor, YG has struggled to find an opportunity to get an education.
"His gang ties we already deeply rooted from when YG was a child, because his father has been a part of the Blood faction since before Reynolds was born."
But now YG has the opportunity to get an education and keep himself out of trouble, thanks to new community out reach programs. This is thanks to several community run outreach programs in his area. In the Morningside area, 21% of families are single parent homes. According to a recent census of the GTA, that statistic isn't far off the numbers for the rest of the city. In Toronto, almost 25% of families are single-parent. A lack of parental support becomes a factor towards young people like Reynolds becoming involved with gang culture.
Additionally having a lack of employment options in the community has an important part to play for youth who grow in the negative influenced environment. According to the City of Toronto, 36 percent of young people are unemployed in YG's area. Despite the challenges people in this environment face, there are local outreach groups that provide positive outlets expression for youth living in poverty. One group, called Rise Edutainment, allows people in the community to use creative spoken word poetry in a free expression environment in order to spread positivity throughout the community. It’s these groups where you see people perform freely in order to feel open about their unfortunate circumstances.
Randell Adeji is one of the outreach speakers who feel not enough attention is being put on to outreach programs. This follows the 30% increase of shooting occurrences that have happened in Toronto in the past year.
Another outreach group that looks for young people who grow up in the inner city is Focus of Youth. Focus on Youth has allowed youth to be placed back in the same neighborhoods they’ve grown up in order to become youth mentors of the younger children in the community. For the leaders who run these programs, focus on youth they’ve seen the cases of young people like YG who haven’t gotten involved with the program and feel that there’s a lack of real funding happening to increase these programs in the environment. But studies show that for young people like YG, support networks such as out reach programs that keep him off the streets increase the chances of employment after high school graduation by 46%. Which is a step in the right direction when it comes to keeping youth off the streets.
Written by: Kyle Pierre
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