TORONTO - The Assets Coming Together for Youth (ACT for Youth) project will hold a launch and community forum at York University on Friday, Nov. 20 at 5:30pm.

ACT for Youth will conduct community-based research focused on positive youth development in the Jane-Finch neighbourhood over the course of the next five years. The project is funded by a $1-million Community-University Research Alliance (CURA) grant from the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

The launch will provide an opportunity for the Jane-Finch community, especially youth, to connect with the project and find out how they can be involved.

The project’s alliance of youth, scholars and more than 20 community organizations is led by York University professor Uzo Anucha, and Sue Wilkinson, Executive Director of the Jane/Finch Community and Family Centre.

”Youth in Toronto’s Jane-Finch community, like youth in other urban areas, are often seen as a social problem,” says Wilkinson. “To challenge these negative stereotypes, ACT for Youth will focus instead on youth assets and adopt a social justice approach that recognizes the social, political and economic forces young people face.”

The project’s community partners include Friends in Trouble; The Spot – Where Youth Wanna be; PEACH; the Laidlaw Foundation; JVS - YouthInc.; Y-NOT, and Black Creek Community Health Centre.

Jamal Clarke, Executive Director of Friends in Trouble and chair of the project’s youth sub-committee, hopes the partnership will allow for a different picture of youth to emerge.

“We want to provide a platform to share and strengthen youth assets and to find ways to bring meaningful resources into organizations like Friends in Trouble,” Clarke says.

Anucha, a professor in York’s School of Social Work, part of the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, emphasizes that organizers want to make the university, and its resources, accessible to the community.

“Part of our reason for having the event at York University is that we see York as part of the Jane-Finch community. We would like Jane-Finch youth to get to know the university well and feel comfortable here,” she says.

ACT for Youth’s community partners are joined by an interdisciplinary network of scholars from York University, Ryerson University, George Brown College, McMaster University, University of Calgary, and University of Windsor, along with youth who will train and work as peer researchers.

The event will also include a screening of “Invisible City,” a documentary by Oscar-nominated director Hubert Davis, which follows the lives of two Regent Park boys. The coordinator of Regent Park’s Pathways to Education, Ainsworth Morgan, who stars in the documentary, will lead youth in a community dialogue based on themes raised in the film.