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Perspectives of Inner City Street Youth

We are a group of young from Beat the Street who are concerned about the issues faced by street youth.

As a group we met over time and planned, researched and put our project together. To start off we took pictures of things that we see everyday on the street. From places weve slept, habits weve picked up and every day problems of our lives as street youth.

Using our pictures we then came up with certain main topics we wanted to work on.

We thought about what really effects street youth. The 3 main problems we identified were:

• Discrimination
• Housing
• Societys views of street youth

These 3 topics all escalated from one main problem: Stereotypes towards Street Youth.

So we each wrote an opinion piece about our experiences. We wanted to get our perspectives out there in order to challenge stereotypes towards street youth.

We though it would be excellent if our pieces could get published, so we worked with Young Peoples Press and they put our pieces up on their website.

We also had the idea of making a magazine featuring some of our pictures and writings.

You can see our pictures and read our magazine by clinking on the links below.

Hope you enjoy!!!

Amanda
Brian
Keith
Joy
Bobby

Peace Power is made up of four interconnected elements that promote personal and community well-being. The four elements are:

• Recognize Contributions and Successes
• Make Peace
• Act Wtih Respect
• Share Power to Build Community

May 2003 April 2004, a new group of young people used music production software to create songs and music about topics they identified as important to them.

Some of the issues identified by the group: surviving day-to-day as a street-involved youth, barriers to accessing support and services, poverty, homelessness, betrayal, racism, and lack of access to outlets of self-invention. When developing what message the group wanted to communicate to their youth audiences they focused on the positive: Chase your dreams, Develop yourself, and Widen your perspective.

The group participated in several workshops to assist them in focusing their issues, building skills and expressing themselves in different ways. The ultimate goal was to build a dynamic show. In addition to in-depth learning of Acid Pro music production software, the group learned about lyric writing and song construction, and participated in a Breakdancing and a video production workshop. They also participated in a Forum Theatre Workshop. This assisted them in building the content and approach of their performances. The youth also spent two weeks with Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography learning about photography with a focus on taking pictures that reflected the lyrical and thematic content of their music. Gallery 44 is a non-profit artist-run centre.

The Peace Power group did fifteen performances in total, presenting to over 700 youth and adults in a variety of settings, including the 6th Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival, April 2004.

The group also got the 2003 Youth Advocate Award for Innovation

Please see http://www.beat-the-street.org/learn/peace.html and http://www.beat-the-street.org/learn/resources.html to see some of the work of the project.

FYI: The concept of Peace Power was created by Dr. Mark Mattaini and group. http://www.bfsr.org/PEACEPOWER.html