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About YAAACE

Y.A.A.A.C.E Summer Institute:

Prior to the summer of 2007 we were hearing the summer of the guns repeated, however quite the opposite occurred. Many of the potential perpetrators and victims were busy co-existing in a safe space (camp Y.A.A.A.C.E/B2M). Many of the potential torch bearers of the ever present gang subculture were totally engaged in positive and meaningful ways. Please understand that our vision is not in anyway self-serving. Devon and I tenure in this community has been filled with despair as it relates to the number of young people who have lost their way and inevitable becoming statistics. Frequently the children we worked with and loved like our own children make the media for all the wrong reasons. The statistics as it relates to dis-engagement and marginalization are stifling. We have a generation of young black youth who are of the mindset that living on the periphery (unemployed, institutionalized, uneducated, violent) is socially acceptable, emancipatory, or constructs the hyper masculinity paradigm which facilitate survival in these urban inner-city environments. We are simply trying to counter the latter by implementing proactive mechanisms that counter the aforementioned vices. We are simply packaging education and civic responsibility and providing meaningful alternatives to children. We are competing with the pervasive vice of a lucrative and ever lurking drug trade. As frontline workers we see a vortex when education and civic responsibility are compromised. We are asking for your help in making a difference. We are not asking for monetary compensation. P.S Devon Thompson with the assistance of the students in our camp compiled a video diary of the summer activities. The content of the video diary embodies the expanded opportunities we would like to provide our students with year round sustainability.

Background Information:

Mr. Thompson and Mr. Jones, in October 2006, facilitated a round table discussion with some fifty young people, and subsequently formulated the ‘Youth Association for Academics, Athletics and Character Education (Y.A.A.A.C.E.).’ Based on the feedback from the youth at the aforementioned meeting: youth in post secondary institutions; youth who were disengaged from schools and some of who had become involved with the criminal justice system; youth who the system had failed etc; Devon Thompson and Devon Jones concluded that despite the fact that they had work tirelessly on various initiatives in their respective neighbourhood of employment (Driftwood and Oakdale), it was now mandatory to collaborate agendas in an attempt to unify the large number of students divided on both sides of Finch. The resounding positions voiced by the youths were filled with overtones of concern for their safety and a longing to bridge the great divide. read more