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September 20, 1993

Tories TrashTheatre School For Street Youth ©

program helping troubled teens loses half its funding because of efficiency goals

by Angie Gallop

(Source: The Charlatan, Carleton University)

OTTAWA (CUP) — “I went from a small special education class in public school to a big collegiate high school with 1,500 students . . . . I had great difficulty learning in the large classrooms. I couldn’t ask questions. I didn’t care enough to ask questions. I would skip and get behind. The year before I had failed the whole year so when I came back it was even worse. I dropped out. My parents took me to a family psychiatrist who I still hate to this day. He wasn’t sympathetic to me because I wasn’t paying for the sessions. (My parents) were always right. He (told them) to “kick her out and make her live in a group home to smarten her up. I took that as a threat. I never thought it would happen tome. I had just turned 16 and I took off. I realize the garbage and stress that I caused for my mom right now, but at that time I didn’t care. Two weeks later I came home. It was in the evening and I wasn’t welcome. My mom went hysterical and called the po- lice. It all came crashing down on me. My life changed in that one night. I was sent to a hostel where I had to stay_for a month. Even during Christmas. It was very depressing.”

So goes the story of Katrin Clouse, an alumna of the Kensing- ton Youth Theatre Employment Skills (KYTES) project, a program for socially disadvantaged youth in Toronto. Clouse was one of a small group of KYTES members who came to the FED UP protest May 15 on Parliament Hill.

Sitting on the Hill’s concrete staircase, Clouse and her friends looked like any other group among the thousands taking part in the

. demonstration. Nothing identified them as an organized group, ex-

cept the black flag carried by one member.

They travelled from Toronto to protest the federal govern- ment's funding-cut of $346,000 to the KYTES program, which makes up more than half its annual budget. The cut was announced March 17 and the organization has.a wind-down budget until the end of July. KYTES is a full-time, 20-week program which pays minimum- wage to youth with problems like substance-abuse, homelessness or illiteracy.

. “The program is the job in which they practice having a job,” says Ned Dickens, KYTES councillor and theatre director. “We de- velop skills like ‘giving a shit’, being there and working with other people.” Dickens describes KYTES as a “pre-employment” skills pro-

Half the program is devoted to academic upgrading, where

-- ‘members can earn high-school credits in subjects such as English,

math and family studies, with a teacher on the premises. For the other half, they create and perform a play.

“They do everything: they write it, direct it, light it and de- sign and build the set,” says Dickens. “I am just a tool kit, a resource base. I offer a number of different ways to approach different prob- lems and in the end if 1 am excluded (from the process) I have achieved the goal of the program.”

“I felt very alienated. I didn't make education a priority. I made making friends, becoming cool my priorities — popularity. I had blue hair in a very conservative preppy school. It was a matter of wanting to make friends but hating everybody there. There was a group of about 10 of us.We were the ‘rejects of the school’We didn’t have anything in common with anybody.Wed go out and steal cars.”

KYTES will be funded by the federal government no longer, because the Department of Employment and Immigration defines its success in terms of the number of kids getting jobs.

“We provided the funding with a commitment from KYTES administrators to a high job-placemient rate for the youth being as- sisted,” says Bernadette Seward, communications officer for the pub- lic affairs branch of Employment and Immigration.

“A recent audit of KYTES demonstrates their success rate was only 36 per cent so we cannot continue — particularly in a time of fiscal restraint — to fund a program that offers that kind of return on our investment.”

Seward added that the cost per participant in KYTES is almost double what was promised, because of a lower-than-expected job

placement rate.

“KYTES had an agreement with the federal government to help 36 severely disadvantaged youth to get jobs with the total cost per placement being $12,381,” she says. “Instead, a recent audit of the program shows the cost is $26,667 per placement.”

Seward says her department is obligated, as a responsible or- ganization representing taxpayers, to cease the funding of the pro-

But Dickens says Seward’s department hasn't taken into ae- count that today’s job market is a tough one.

“Our mandate is to give these people basic jobs skills,” says Dickens. “(The federal government) feels we haven't succeeded if our graduates are not employed six months after leaving KYTES. They ignore the fact that in general there is a high percentage of people not working”

Ron Crockford is manager of Metro Toronto Canadian Jobs Strategies, a local branch’of Employment and Immigration which funds job-creation programs like KYTES. He says the department had con-

cerns about the KYTES program for the past two years.

“Our problem is with the efficiency and effectiveness of the program,” says Crockford. “Also, (it) has to do with the project’s mandate or vision and whether or not it is in line with what our department wants to do.”

Crockford says his department is concerned with getting peo- ple into the workforce, whereas the goal of the KYTES program is to teach severely socially disadvantaged youth the value of responsibil- ity.

"I was a spoiled brat. My friend’s parents would be away. Id go over Friday night. Wed raid their wine cellar. Wed steal mickeys from the liquor store. Wed get what ever we could. First I started staying out overnight, then two nights, then half a week. Wei also do a lot of experimenting wn eceg tas eit aol te awe ree ay doing a lot.”

’ Brent Patterson is a spokesperson for the John Howard Soci- ety, an agency which-helps individuals who have been, or could be, in trouble with the law. He believes KYTES is a program which helps keep such people out of trouble.

In a letter to Employment and Immigration Minister Bernard Valcourt, Patterson noted that six out of eight job-training programs for youth have been cut in MetropolitanToronto since 1989 and fund- ing for the remaining programs has been reduced each year.

“It is our contention that if additional money is not spent on youth employment programs, more money will be spent in other areas, including unemployment insurance, social assistance, health and welfare and correctional services,” the letter reads.

But Seward says her department already has a SpecializedYouth Unit, an office in Toronto which is committed to the problems of disadvantaged kids.

She says it is responsible for many youth programs but could not say how many, and was unable to confirm how many employ- ment skills programs for youth there are in Toronto right now. “We are not cutting funding for (disadvantaged youth),” she says.

“We are merely discontinuing KYTES’ funding for the rea- sons already mentioned.”

Crockford says Toronto has six or seven programs which pre- pare youths for the job market, but these are not strictly for street youth or youth dealing with addiction problems like KYTES.

“There are different needs inherent in addiction problems which are incompatible with employment programming,” he says. “I'm not sure any employment program would take on alcohol or drug problems. Our mandate is to put people in the workforce and we expect to achieve this end.”

When asked how the governments helping street kids, Seward said organizations like the Specialized Youth Unit are currently look- ing at “options.”

"The month at the hostel scared the living daylights out of me. because I wasn't used to that.I had never been downtown. The violence, drug addicts, prostitutes, were all in my face for the first time. I had to make a choice to either be like them or to have my old life back which I wanted. I went to an alternative school which was great but then my friend came along. There was something about the two of us together. Wed do something illegal. We stole a car and I ended up in jail for half a month. Because of this I ended up out on bail with a curfew and a order to stay at a group home. I was forced to live there.I didn’t want to be there. Life was a drag. The courts said I had to stay unless I went back to school or got a job. I heard about KYTES through a friend. He said ‘I’ve got this great job where I get to do all these neat things’ I got an interview right away but I was scared to tell them that I was living in a group home, that I had a criminal record and that I might have to take days off for court. I was scared I wouldn’t be hired. Actually, I got hired on all those factors because of what KYTES is all about.”

While KYTES is determined to stick around, the federal cut is going to hurt the program. Right now, Dickens and KYTES’ alumni are working to raise funds so they can start fresh in September. KYTES had taken over the site of an abandoned night club and renovated it, adding a theatre, kitchen, classroom, woodshop, office and lobby. Now it will no longer be able to afford this space.

KYTES will be moving at the end of the month to a smaller

space which is being rented to them at a discount. Dickens is looking .

for another space to house the project in September.

The KYTES staff has now been reduced from five to two peo- ple. But to Dickens, the most crucial loss is the ability to offer wages to the youths in the program.

“Tt used to be that youths who worked for KYTES were able to come off of welfare because we were able to pay them minimum wage,” he says. “Without the payroll, the basic motivation for youths to show up every day is gone. Being there is a job skill we are trying to teach and this is harder than it sounds when (they've) never hada job or a routine or a home.”

"KYTES kept me out of trouble. It was a coincidence that I love theatre and the program uses theatre asa tool to get a group to work together. The whole concept really worked for me. I've learned life skills like communication, how: to do a resume, how to hunt for a job. I earned three school credits and I've made friends I still have today, I finished KYTES and went back to school. Half a year later I left the group home and moved back in with my parents. Our relationship is a lot better. Now I live on my own, I’ve got a great place and I've just been accepted into the University of Toronto. It’s the transitional year program — pre-university courses but I am considered a univer- sity student. I am still using KYTES. There are people here to give me advice. They are

not trying to push their opinions down my throat — no religion. It’s just a place, my place to do whatever I want:really. I’m still on welfare and I will be on OSAP.They don’t discriminate against me because of that.”

Despite having their government funding pulled, KYTES members have not relented in pursuing other means of support.

“We're not going to give up,” says Clouse. “We're not going to let a lousy funding cut beat us.”

KYTES recently held an “awareness show” called CUT THIS. The posters advertising the show feature a fist with its index finger raised.

“We are trying to make it clear that we are here to stay by raising funds, and we are quite excited about what we've done,” says Dickens. “We have already raised a quarter of our budget for next year by approaching corporations, and asking our other sources of fund- ing to increase the amount of their donations.”

He says at full strength KYTES’ annual budget was $600,000. His revised annual budget is $275,000.

Right now, Dickens says he is looking at creative ways to make

'. up for these losses, such as getting some of the alumni to volunteer.

Some KYTES alumni are already involved with the funding drive, and took the time to travel to Ottawa to attend the protest on Parliament Hill.

Although it is unable to meet the quota for employed alumni, KYTES seems to have achieved its goal with Katrin Clouse. She not only ‘gives.a shit’ about her life, but she cares enough to volunteer her time to help the program that helped her.

Although Clouse is mad at the government for cutting the funding to the KYTES program, she says the spirit of KYTES will not be defeated.

As for the rally on Parliament Hill, Clouse says she was disap- pointed because the only solidarity. she found was people blaming the government for their problems, instead of focusing on solutions.

If the goal of KYTES is to give its members a sense of being responsible so that they can function in the jobs Employment and Immigration insists they find, it has succeeded for Katrin Clouse.

She feels people and organizations, like KYTES, have to start taking the responsibility to find the answers to their dilemmas. “If I have a problem,” she says “I'll do what I can and not yell at someone else to do it for me.” & i

Street kids are too often invisible.

the slice

is a magazine for, about and entirely by street kids. Their funding comes from the government, which is hardly sensitive to their needs. If you have any computer or office equiptment that you are willing to donate, please contact Wendy Wood at 662-8822 or Mark Foster in Room 1020 at Douglas College.