Written by: Jasmeet Randhawa of the Young Philosophers Society
Children huddled in a cold, decaying, bunker-esqe room, holding out a bowl as they line up for porridge, huddled in masses and thoroughly malnourished, dying of either scarlet fever, or tuberculosis-a Dickensian image that has defined the public perception of youth shelters since the Victorian age. One, that examined even with a middling critical sense, would surely fall apart- we as a society, have advanced well past the age of child labourers and the ravages of TB, yet it seems, our perceptions, still lag behind.
While the more rational among us would scoff at the assumption that Charles Dickens can still be trusted as an up-to-date portrayal of the current state of youth shelters and social services offered to minors, the pictures we often drudge up aren’t much better.
Speaking to my personal perspective on the issues, I had a distinctly dystopian perspective on the services offered to youth in my community. How could I not- all the news seems to tell us, are the stories of falling youth education, the limits placed on those of lower socio-economic status, and the inability of our social services to keep up with the demand that is put on them.
To be frank, I really didn’t have a concrete sense of what a real youth shelter would be like, most of us don’t when it comes to things like this. We oftentimes hold loose notions and ideas, but not concrete inferences, and I say this as the founder of a youth network that actively raises the voices of disenfranchised youth. We can speak for the most part to the struggles youth face, but when asked about their actual conditions, most are absolutely clueless.
As a part of Young Philosophers Society, I was given the opportunity to see the great workplaces like these can accomplish in person, with a visit to Youth Without Shelter’s youth home.
Before the visit, I was asked to write down a few notes on what I thought it would be like. Combing through my notepad now, it’s amazing to see just how wrong oneself can be, blinded by both personal and pop-cultural stereotypes. We are often blind to how the real world can be better than anything we imagined.
Over and over again, the words hostile environment have been written in my notes. To past me, a purely logical conclusion. Children don’t go to youth shelters by choice, often driven there by significant hardships that drive them to these places, and that certainly wouldn’t inspire a loving community of people who want to be there. On top of that, modern media depicts many youths not wanting to enter there in the first place, and shelters in general are shown to be just as dangerous as living on the street. I’ve read reports about children’s belongings fitting into trash bags, lugged from shelter to shelter, as even their places of refuge hold no warmth. Furthermore, shelters are often placed in communities that exhibit a lot of civil unrest, adding further to the dystopian narrative.
Gladly, I can report that this is not the reality at YWS.
When I walked in, I was greeted by a pleasant neighborhood, with a little road going towards the shelter home. A well-kept house, in good shape, with artwork adorning the stairs. As I walked in, I saw kids laughing in the sunlight outside, smiling at each other.
Ringing the doorbell, and walking in, I did NOT see a messy living space littered with beds, or for that matter, any mess at all that would indicate a level of chaos. A pristine, clean entranceway, with a communal space for the kids, in which I could see some relaxing. The walls were adorned with murals and quotes, one of which caught my eye: an image of children of all different backgrounds holding hands, with the words, “We rise by lifting others” written above them. Immediately I knew, there was nothing hostile about it.
Anastasia Kemp, was the woman who led us through the place. I have to say, there was something transformative about the way in which she directed the tour. The first thing we saw was one of the therapy rooms- a room that Kemp mentioned would be changing soon, into a medical room. Littered on the floor were bags of things- things that belonged to children who had just come into the shelter, housed in trash bags, on the floor. This would be the only element of disarray I would see in the whole tour. To me, it represented a sense of transformation. I would later find out, that while they may arrive like this, the children leave with duffle bags and suitcases, giving me a sense of what this place gave to it’s kids: not only a house, but a new life, in which they lived with dignity and a sense of belonging, in which they mattered, no matter what circumstances they may have come from. Just like that room will be soon transformed into some greater, so too are the children that walk through this place.
I do not presume to know what these children are going through, as I write this article, sitting in my own, personal air-conditioned room in the middle of suburbia, on a laptop that my parents bought for me, it would be arrogant to assume I could understand a fraction of their pain. But what I saw was a place that did at the very least, understand what needed to be done, what they could do, to give back the flower of opportunity to these kids, that they fully deserved.
They offer both emergency support programs, and a long-term support system in more ways than one. They take in about 56 kids at a time, committing them to a program in which the children receive the education and skills they need to succeed in the real world. It’s not just a house, it’s not just a place to sleep- they provide food, (and by food, I mean real home-cooked meals, not just canned foods), educational resources, help them find houses, clothes, and workshops for resume building and how to find a job. It’s not just a shelter, in some sense it imitates aspects of the home, giving them the opportunity to learn the same skills that many learn from their parents. It’s definitely not what I thought it would be- and thank the lord for that.
It also gave me pause, in a sense. Yes, the situation is much better than what I thought it would be, but it wasn’t a wonderland (and that’s not a riff on the shelter, truth of the matter is, the situation is such that I would not want any child to be in).
It made me consider walking through this place, talking to a woman, who spends her days organizing all of this for youth- finding materials for hot meals, organizing clothes donations, finding homes for them to move into- all stuff I take for granted. I don’t have to worry where my next meal comes from, the mess in my closet shows that I have too many clothes to count, and I’ve never worried about having a roof over my head.
I remember the walk I had with Jaslyn, one of the first people I reached out to when I founded YPS. We both love politics and want to make a difference in our communities, but coming here showed us how blind we still were to many of the realities youth like us face. Bubble-wrapped in suburbia, we often fail to see both the joys that people work to bring to those who are disadvantaged, and the true extent of suffering that has the capability to manifest.
We reminisced on our sound-box of IB programme students, constantly worrying about grades or school, and we often don’t recognize the privilege we have in getting to worry about something like that. For too many others our age, they have much bigger fish to fry.
All in all, I cherish the opportunity to see change in action around me that YWS gave us, and I hope that they are able to continue their mission. That Dickensian image I presented at the start, is not the one I think people should leave with. I’d much rather them see that mural that is proudly displayed on the YWS walls, of a community of children on the steps, bringing each other up, one after the other, no matter creed or colour.
