Youth in Focus

Toronto neighbourhoods, Thorncliffe Park and Flemingdon Park, both have a high number of young people, many of whom have recently arrived in Canada with their families. While it is widely recognized that newcomer youth often face challenges such as difficulties with school, employment, and experiences of racism and discrimination, there is limited research on the specific needs of newcomer youth in neighbourhoods with high immigrant populations. Additionally, there is little exploration of what types of interventions outside the formal school system would best address these needs. 

Youth in Focus (YiF) is a collaborative partnership between The Neighbourhood Organization (TNO) and the Global Migration Institute. The objective of this project is to better understand the needs of youth living in the Thorncliffe Park and Flemingdon Park neighbourhoods and to identify what can be done by neighbourhood organizations such as TNO to address these needs. The project will focus on TNO’s recently opened Youth Wellness Hub, which offers holistic services to the youth of Thorncliffe Park and Flemingdon Park. It will examine the approach taken by the Hub to address the needs of local youth and explore ways to enhance the Hub’s effectiveness.

The project will collect information through interviews and surveys with local stakeholders in the Thorncliffe Park and Flemingdon Park neighbourhoods, including service providers, youth, and their parents. In addition, youth will be invited to engage in a digital storytelling project where they can share their experiences of living in either of the two neighbourhoods.

Phase I (Background Research); Phase II (Data Collection); Phase III (Analysis); Phase IV (Digital Storytelling Workshops).

The creative output from the selected YiF cohort culminates via a creative Nuit Blanche-like festival in the late spring/summer of 2026 that will engage the community in an in-person gathering. The authorship, voice, and editorial rights in the content of each creative expression remains with each creator. These new creative digital storytelling outputs and recordings may offer additional valuable lived-experiential knowledge and measurements that could further inform and support the initial research findings.