Success Beyond Limits Education Program

Job Description

Youth Outreach Worker (YOW)

Program Overview:  The Success Beyond Limits Education Program is a non-profit organization based in the Jane-Finch community.  Success Beyond Limits works around the calendar delivering both a school year program at Westview Centennial Secondary School and a summer program at York University for students from Brookview Middle School and Oakdale Park School. We incorporate credits, mentorship, employment, nutrition, recreation, access to resources, exposure to new experiences, collaboration, and advocacy into our support of students.

The position of YOW reports to: Executive Director and works in coordination with the entire staff team.

Salary: Commensurate with experience.

Hours: Full-time

Contract: November 2013 to June 2014

Position Summary:  This position provides a range of outreach services to individuals, families and groups to enhance or maintain youth functioning in the community. This position carries responsibility for prevention, early intervention, program development and community outreach services with youth and families under the auspices of the provincial Youth Outreach Worker Program.

Click below link for full posting details

SBL Youth Outreach Worker Posting

SBL Mentor, Princess organized a surprise birthday celebration for fellow Mentor Shukri. Here are some pictures of the SBL family celebrating.

We catch a ride to the city’s biggest community hip-hop fest with a group of youngsters and hear about suburban alienation blues.

The beginning of the school year is an exciting time for SBL. It’s a time to re-connect with the incoming grade 9s and transition back into our youth space at Westview.  This year we’re in a bigger space, which presents us with the opportunity to re-design it.   With minimal resources but a lot of love and creativity among the SBL family, together we have begun re-creating our youth space. Here are some pictures:

Click on the link below to watch more about the game that will be played on Sat. 28th in partnership with Success Beyond Limits.

—–> OWARE: The World’s Oldest Board Game <——

Fourteen year old Peter Anaide and 81 year old Samuel Stevens.

MACPRI, in association with Success Beyond Limits, will present the 2nd Toronto International Oware Tournament and Family Fun Day on Saturday, September 28, from 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. at Westview Centennial Secondary School, 755 Oakdale Road (West of Jane St. off Finch) Ave.   The Tournament and Family Fun Day is a unique opportunity for developing community engagement and strengthening inter-generational togetherness while playing a fun and ancient African board game.   This year’s Oware Family Fun Day activities is a free admission family event with fun children’s activities, performances, storytelling, an African Market Place, Capoeira African martial arts demonstrations, an international All African Inventors Museum, jewellery making, drumming workshops, storytelling circles, head wrapping workshops, Afrobics, art and crafts and performances by community artists.   Nana Akpaabe Adessa Oji II, the seven-year-old daughter of the Oware Canada founder, who is visiting from Ghana, West Africa will be a special guest storyteller in the Knowledge Bookstore Storytelling Circle.   While the event is free, those wishing to participate in the tournament will be required to pay a fee of $10.00 to register, and cash prizes of $300.00 (first prize), $150.00 (second prize) and $50.00 (third prize) will be awarded. First to fourth place finishers will receive an Oware game board.   Oware Day 2011 was a huge success and attracted participants from all across Southern Ontario with 48 players sitting for the tournament. The goal for 2013 is a record 256 players who must be 12 years of age or older on September 28 in order to participate.   The 2013 Toronto Oware tournament will have a bonus round where Samuel Stevens, the 81-year-old 2011 Oware champion from Antigua & Barbuda, will face off against the new champion. This will be one of the highlights of the day. All are invited.   For more information about Oware and the Oware (Abapa) tournament playing rules visit www.owarecanada.com. To register for the tournament, call 416-230-8301or email owarecanada@gmail.com.

http://sharenews.com/all-invited-to-oware-tournament-and-fun-day/

Good Afternoon SBL Friends and Supporters,

A chill in the air and the warmth of the sun sums up the season we are entering, the beginning of a new school year.  Looking back at our summer, there is a similar contrast: we moved between the heights of joy and the depths of despair.  Our summer program, by all accounts, was the best yet.  Our mentors, teachers, students, volunteers, partners, funders, and parents were incredible in making it all happen.  Being in Osgoode Hall Law School enhanced the experience for everyone, as did the dedication from our mentors who went through 14 weeks of training leading up to the summer.  And we lost three amazing young people in the community: Tahj, Oshe and Kwame.  Mentors, students and staff  lost friends, neighbours, and community members.  While our city seeks answers to the questions of ‘what is happening’ and ‘why’, we sit in a position of privilege where we are daily witnesses to the success, positivity, dedication, leadership and commitment of youth in Jane and Finch.  And we hope to share some of that with you.

Mentor Debrief Week

After our 6 week summer program, each year we spend one additional at York U with our mentors for our debrief week.  Through a series of workshops and facilitated conversations we reflect on the accomplishments and challenges of the summer program and prepare for the role our mentors will play in the coming school year.  One of the challenges a program as intensive as ours can face is that, by week six, people tend to be pretty exhausted.  However, one of the big markers of how this summer went was that our mentors finished the program energized and missing the students – they said they were ready to go for a few more weeks!

School and Community Partnerships – YCEC 

Since 2008, we have participated in the annual York University Centre for Education and Community (YCEC) summer institute.  This year, the theme was school and community partnerships – a perfect fit for us.  Having been a part of the planning process, SBL offered a workshop on the first day of the institute.  Taking place on August 27^th and 28^th at York U, Kaneka (Program Manager) and Hafsa (Mentor) facilitated a panel discussion, which turned the room into a fully interactive conversation where learning was shared from all that were present (and included some powerful performances from two of our Mentors, Destini and Moose).  We were happy to have the Trillium Foundation and JustBGraphic join our staff, mentors, and youth board members on the panel to illustrate how many partners it really takes to make a school and community partnership work.

Glendon Tour

On Monday, July 29^th, a group of 15 students and mentors from our program headed on the York U shuttle bus to the Glendon Campus for a tour of this small, yet beautiful part of the university.  Students were led through the full spectrum of post-secondary student life at Glendon, from the athletic facilities, residence and the academic environment, to the emphasis on the French language and the storied history of the campus.  Highlighted by a tour of the office of President Emerita Dr. Lorna Marsden, who treated us to lunch, which really made everyone feel like VIP guests.  You know the impact of something like this through the conversations on the bus ride home; the consistent sentiment was about seeing university as a cool life experience and something to be excited about.

Career Day 2013

One of the highlights each summer is our Career Day.  We invite ten young, diverse professionals to come out to York for a full morning with us.  Students rotate in small groups through 10 different rooms for a Q&A style dialogue with each of our guests.  The careers included this year were entrepreneur, journalist, lawyer, mechanic, and more.  As important as the range of careers is, the depth of the stories shared are even more powerful;  stories which point out the journeys of ups, downs, and unpredictable twists that have brought these accomplished professionals to the place where they desire to share the intimate details behind their achievements.  You can see photos and a story about the day from SNAP North York at the following link:

http://www.snapnorthyork.com/?option=com_sngevents&id[]=570069&photoId=1924736&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=snapd

CBC Video Link

When we decided to pilot the Hip Hop Curriculum being developed in partnership with the TDSB and Education Attainment West, it was because of the huge success we had seen in our own Hip Hop Literacy programming, which was led by SBL staff and teacher, Tesfai (one of the writers of this emerging curriculum).  Moving beyond the idea of looking at Hip Hop lyrics and using them to teach English, this curriculum aims at engaging with content and to bring about higher order thinking in students on issues of class, gender and media literacy.  In July, CBC News came by to check out how students are responding to it.  If you missed the airing of the piece, you can check it out here:

http://successbl.com/2013/08/01/cbc-captures-the-sbl-summer-program/

Mentor Profile in Boss Magazine – Whitney Smith 

Whitney Smith joined our program as a mentee in 2009, and quickly emerged as a leader, being voted in by her fellow mentees as the summer program valedictorian.  It was not long before her volunteering in the program led to a role as a mentor.  In her last year at Westview she served as Student Council President (and Westview valedictorian), and spent the summer with us in a position that she pitched to us, where she would shadow and support the SBL staff team in order to learn how the program functions, “behind the scenes”.  In the most recent issue of the AMAZING youth-led issue of BOSS Magazine, Whitney was featured.  Read more about this amazing young leader whose name you will come to recognize over the years.

You can read it on page 102 of the magazine (page 52 of the PDF) at this link:

http://www.bossmag.biz/documents/Boss-Spring-Summer-2013.pdf

Graduation 2013!

Held on Tuesday, August 6^th in the Price Family Theatre at York U, we were overwhelmed to welcome over 300 people to celebrate the success of youth in the Jane and Finch community.  The evening was full of performances, awards and our  end of summer slide show.

Highlights included Matthew receiving the Jays Care Mentor Among Mentors Award (voted on strictly by the mentors) for the second year in a row, and Moose receiving the newly launched Student’s Choice Mentor Award.

In addition to the many acknowledgements of accomplishment and growth throughout the evening, we were most proud that 100 students earned their first secondary school credit!

You can read about what the North York Mirror wrote about our grad at:

http://www.insidetoronto.com/news-story/4029270-program-gives-edge-to-students-entering-grade-9/

Toronto Star Article and Conversation

On Saturday, August 31^st, the Toronto Star published a story titled “Jane and Finch: Toronto’s most dangerous place to be a kid?”.The story was in response to the tragic loss of life seen in the community this year.  Many of the sentiments shared did not make it into the article, but you can see the perspective we tried to bring to the conversation.

You can read the story here:

http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2013/08/31/jane_and_finch_torontos_most_dangerous_place_to_be_a_kid.html

You can see our attempt to shift the nature of the conversation through twitter here:

http://storify.com/jpags/dialoguing-on-change-for-jane-finch-community?utm_content=storify-pingback&utm_medium=sfy.co-twitter&awesm=sfy.co_aPSu&utm_source=t.co&utm_campaign=

We will be continuing the dialogue Friday, September 6^th from 11am-12:30pm online through a link connected to the article link above.

Young Lives Taken From Us

As you are all well aware, the passing of St.Aubyn, Tahj, Oshe and Kwame over the past few months has broken hearts and left so many in grief.  In the midst of this, many throughout the city have been talking about what is happening with the search for ‘why’ and ‘what do we do’ at the heart of the conversation.  SBL was asked to join this conversation on Metro Morning on August 26^th.

You can listen to that interview here:

http://www.cbc.ca/metromorning/episodes/2013/08/26/teenagers-shot-again/

OWARE Day

On Saturday, September 28^th, SBL is partnering with Macpri and OwareDayCanada.com in hosting an Oware Tournament at Westview Centennial. Oware is a strategy board game centuries old with roots that stretch throughout 54 African countries, the Philippines, Indonesia, India and Germany.  From 10am to 6pm, players from the ages of “9 to 90” will be competing to be the tournament champion.  The day will also feature an African Inventors Museum, performances, food and crafts.  Come check it out with the whole family!

You can read more about the event at:

http://sharenews.com/all-invited-to-oware-tournament-and-fun-day/

On Monday, July 29^th, a group of 15 students and mentors from our program headed on the York U shuttle bus to the Glendon Campus for a tour of this small, yet beautiful part of the university.  Students were led through the full spectrum of post-secondary student life at Glendon, from the athletic facilities, residence and the academic environment, to the emphasis on the French language and the storied history of the campus.  Highlighted by a tour of the office of President Emerita Dr. Lorna Marsden, who treated us to lunch, which really made everyone feel like VIP guests.  You know the impact of something like this through the conversations on the bus ride home; the consistent sentiment was about seeing university as a cool life experience and something to be excited about.