In the News
May 26, 2014
In every city there are some who call the streets their home. Those who aren’t fortunate enough to come home to food on the table. Today, several social agencies are putting their heads together to put an end to youth homelessness in Kingston. Newswatch’s Chris Wiggins has more.
Gathering at the Ambassador Hotel, the United Way of Kingston along with many other local agencies have come together to tackle the problem of youth homelessness.
“It’s not just kids who are on the street, but we have a lot of youth who are surfing, couch surfing, living with friends and moving around constantly so our goal is to look at what the causes are, what we can do about it and how we can prevent it in the future.”
Brittney Taylor who moved out of her parents house at the age of 17 has first-hand youth homelessness experience. Being one of the action plan leaders, she stresses the importance of bringing this awareness forward.
“If you don’t have the shelters and you don’t have the resources then the youth are sleeping on the streets, they’re getting into drugs but if you try to help them, if you provide support systems that can help them then you end up with less homelessness then you did before.”
Last year, Kingston was selected to be one of two communities in the country to participate in a national pilot project. The objective is to develop a plan on mobilizing local capacity to end youth homelessness in mid-sized communities.
“This Action Plan brings the community one step closer towards a positive development framework focusing on strengthening the assets and resiliency factors that all young people need to lead a healthy life.”
It’s not just adults brainstorming solutions. Dozens of youth also shared ideas at this forum. United Way CEO Bhavana Varma says that is actually what formed the frame work for their action plan.
“They gave us some really valuable input on what we need to do differently and we have taken that and as a Steering Committee we have developed this plan and now today we are trying to look at ways we can flesh out the plan, have some concrete steps so that by the fall we are all set to proceed.”
For youth like Brittney , she’s encouraged that the group is coming up with solutions to a real-life problem.
“They know that this is an actual issue in Kingston. This isn’t something that is just on TV or in a movie, this is a real life scenario, this is actually happening in our community.”
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