Community Knowledge Centre - Toronto Community Foundation

About this organization

Mission

The PACT Urban Peace Program is a multi award-winning Toronto-based program dedicated to working with at-risk youth and youth in conflict with the law. PACT builds peace and hope in our urban community in partnership with the courts, schools and other youth focused agencies.

PACT has a grassroots beginning and an entrepreneurial approach. To that end, PACT believes it is the community’s responsibility to provide the best programs at the earliest stages to create and maintain peaceful and safe environments, and to bring out young people’s ultimate potential as productive and law abiding citizens.

Founded by two Toronto businessmen in 1995, PACT builds peace in urban communities through empowering, supporting and encouraging youth to reach their full potential in life. PACT has helped thousands of at-risk youth in partnership with the courts and schools in the GTA region with little government funding.

PACT provides a step-by-step action plan to positive change through the following key program areas:

• Restorative Practices based Mediation;
• LifePlan Mentor-Coaching for higher-risk youth
• LifeSkills-based community service projects;
• Integrated after-school programming for youth

History of Organization

The Canadian Foundation for the Prevention of Family Violence, (PACT’s parent organization) was incorporated in 1995. The foundation was started by a small group of volunteers in the community, all with the unwavering purpose to break the cycle of violence perpetuated through abusive conduct in the home. The mission of the foundation is the development, research and delivery of treatment-and-education programs for children and youth, all designed to break the intergenerational cycle of family violence.

Founders David Lockett and Dan Cornacchia had previously created the Redwood Shelter for survivors of family violence in Parkdale in the early 1990s. Lockett and Cornacchia took Redwood from initial concept, through its grassroots beginning, major fundraising efforts and its construction and official opening in 1993. Lockett was also founding president of the shelter.

From that experience, David and Dan decided they should initiate programs that break the cycle of violence in our communities and homes at the causal level. They developed a program (PACT) that deals with the causes of violence, not just its effects.

PACT started out by working exclusively with youth in conflict with the law referred directly from the courts/probation, but realized the enormous societal benefit of getting to kids early before they ended up in the youth justice system. To that end PACT recently expanded its peace mandate by partnering with the schools in high-risk neighbourhoods, the police (and their pre-charge diversion programs) and several youth-focused employment/community agencies.

PACT is creating peace in its urban environment by working with youth across the whole risk spectrum, including at-risk youth from low-income and priority neighbourhoods, youth in conflict with the law, as well as incarcerated youth who need a more serious intervention and help reintegrating back into society.

Accolades and Accomplishments

PACT has been recognized by the United Nations:

•  “It’s one of the most remarkable processes I have ever witnessed." Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, UN independent expert on violence against children.

 PACT has been recognized by leaders in the justice system:

•  “I have been saying for years that the community must combat youth crime. PACT is the realization of that wish.” Honourable Roy McMurtry. Attorney General and Chief Justice of Ontario

 It has won praise for its environmental work through its reforestation project:

•  “PACT is setting an extraordinary example for everyone in this province.” Donna Cansfield, Minister of Natural Resources.

 It has been praised for its urban agricultural initiatives and Farm in the City school yard gardens:

•  "PACT Grow to Learn has found a successful way to address food security and environmental and nutritional awareness." Cecilia Rocha, Associate Professor, Ryerson University's School of Nutrition and Director of the Centre for Studies in Food Security.

In 2006, PACT won the Canadian Urban Institute’s Urban Leadership Award for City Initiatives (along with Pinball Clemons, coach of the Toronto Argos).

PACT also won the ROTARY Inaugural Peace Award in 2010.

Programs

>Restorative Practices based Victim/Offender Mediation
>The LifePlan Mentor-Coaching Program
>LifeSkills & Community Service Projects:

1) Restorative Practices based Victim/Offender Mediation: Modelled after Aboriginal healing circles, this was the first program designed and introduced by PACT in the Scarborough Youth Court back in 2001. Now working in partnership with Youth Courts and schools across the GTA as a diversion option for first time offenders, this program offers a highly effective and alternative approach to conflict resolution as well as a meaningful, community based, cost effective and inclusive response to criminal behaviour by our youth.

2) LifePlan Mentor-Coaching Program: This is a unique reintegration tool for Judges and youth who are in serious and repeat conflict with the law (either on the brink of incarceration or coming out of a custodial setting) and are referred to the Program as part of a Probation Order. Youth in this powerful and successful program are matched up with a professional Life Coach and mentor for a period of one year. The coach meets with the youth on a weekly basis to help them develop and execute a plan for turning around their lives one step at a time.

3) LifeSkills & Community Service Projects: All of PACT’s eight innovative LifeSkills projects (both community based and offered as integrated after school programming in priority neighbourhoods) are introductory and experiential in nature and are geared towards youth between the ages of 13-21. All projects are designed to instil confidence and self esteem and ignite a passion. They provide youth with an opportunity to complete required community service hours by including a contribution component. They also give youth practical real world experience that they do not usually receive in the traditional school environment.

Restorative Practices based Victim/Offender Mediation

The PACT Restorative Practices Mediation program is modelled on an Aboriginal healing circle called the Resolution Conference that recreates the events and circumstances of a crime/incident scene through the individual interpretations of everyone involved (arresting officer, victim, charged youth, parents, teachers, etc). This process has the ultimate goals of healing the harm that has been caused and holding youth directly accountable for their behaviour. It creates an emotional understanding of the impact of the crime on everyone involved (especially the victim and the offender) leading to acceptance of responsibility, forgiveness, reconciliation, reform and reintegration. A binding resolution contract is drawn up and must be adhered to by the youth in order to have the charges withdrawn by the Court or the pending suspension withdrawn by the school.

The PACT Resolution Conference process which is scripted and guided by trained facilitators is successful because it concentrates on getting to youth early and eroding their foundation for negative or criminal/violent behaviour. It focuses on healing and empowering victims and ensures accountability for offenders.

PACT has also recently expanded its mediation program and methodology into the school environment where it has consulted with and delivered training workshops for staff members across the Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB).

Funding and Program Partners

PACT works in partnership with the Courts and Schools across Toronto in delivering Resolution Conferences and training workshops around Restorative Practices based mediation. PACT is almost entirely funded by service clubs such as Rotary, as well as businesses, philanthropic foundations and private donations by individuals.

Some of our key funders for this program area are Ernst & Young, Dunpar Homes and a number of Rotary clubs from across Toronto.

Program Impact

This diversion program, which has directly helped over 1500 mostly first time offenders since 2001 deal with their charges in a meaningful way that prevents a criminal record, also positively impacts victims, family members and the wider community. The program offers Toronto based youth courts and schools with a proven alternative model for conflict resolution from the traditional justice system and school based disciplinary action such as suspension and expulsion. Not only does this program free up the court’s and school’s resources so that they can address the more serious cases, it provides for an inclusive community-based response to low level criminal and antisocial behaviour that gives a voice to victims and provides an opportunity for youth in conflict with the law to take responsibility for their actions in a meaningful and timely fashion.

By providing training to the TCDSB, PACT has also positively impacted thousands of staff and students across the entire school board by giving them a new tool for conflict resolution and helping them to promote and maintain a safe and peaceful environment within their schools.

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

“Total reported criminal offences continued to drop in the City of Toronto, down 6 per cent in 2008 over the previous year to 6,689 offences (per 100,000 population).” (Toronto’s Vital Signs®, 2009)

While any amount of crime in our City is obviously too much, this positive stat from Toronto’s Vital Signs report indicating that over all crime rates are down, tells us that all the hard work PACT is doing with its mandate of crime prevention and spreading urban peace working with at risk youth in Priority Areas across Toronto, is one of several programs likely contributing to this positive trend.

Participant Vignette

PACT often mediates family violence cases, such as when one young boy and his family nearly came apart. Both parents were alcoholics. The teenaged boy had a serious anger and violence problem. Police had been to the house several times to deal with issues of verbal and physical abuse in the family. The boy was getting into shoving matches with his mother, pushing her around with his 6-foot frame. One day, mother and son got involved in a pushing and shoving argument and the son hit his mother with a broom. He hit her in the eye, and she ended up with a black eye and a bruise on her arm.

The police charged the boy with assault with a weapon. The case was referred to PACT, which recreated the events and circumstances leading up to the violent incident through individual interpretations of the mother, father and son. PACT was able to provide an emotional catharsis that began the healing of the entire family.

The process creates a positive emotional understanding of the impact of the incident on everyone involved, especially the victim and the offender. From this flows acceptance of responsibility, forgiveness, reconciliation, reform and reintegration serving as a new foundation to rebuild the self-identity of the entire family unit.

In total PACT hosted three Resolution Conferences with family, facilitators and arresting police officer. By the final conference, Dad had entered and completed an alcoholism program and both parents had stopped drinking. The boy had received anger management classes and was happily living at home and attending school regularly with a dramatic improvement in grades. He also attended Alateen to get some coping strategies on living with alcoholism in the family. As is evident, in many cases the process uncovers the need for additional third party support services required by its participants.

What makes PACT so successful is that everyone contributes to the outcome: family, offender, victim, police and community members. The entire community must carry some weight.

The LifePlan Mentor-Coaching Program

Generations of youth are growing up in environments where they really don’t have a chance:

• They don’t have economic advantages;
• They lack the educational resources and inspiration;
• They often come from challenging home environments of poverty and sometimes violence;
• They often lack positive role models.

(Studies show that these factors and related environments are a breeding ground for future habitual criminals. Negative behaviour patterns are handed down from generation to generation.)

For these more seriously troubled youth coming out of custodial settings or on the brink of incarceration, there is a need for trust building, structure, access to community resources and proper reintegration tools to give them a vision, purpose, and direction for their lives.

The PACT LifePlan Mentor-Coaching program is designed for youth in serious conflict with the law who live in or near Toronto and are seriously motivated towards making positive changes in their lives.

PACT LifePlan Mentor-Coaching is an intensive program where the youth is matched up with a professionally-trained personal coach who works one-on-one with the youth on a weekly basis to address identified needs and accomplish set goals in four key areas of their life: Education/Training, Employment/Career, Health & Wellness and Community Contribution.

Funding and Program Partners

Some of the key funders for this program include The Argos Foundation-Stop the Violence, CIBC, Cadillac Fairview, Ernst & Young and several Rotary Clubs across Toronto.

PACT has established very important strategic partnerships with a number of community agencies that provide expertise, resources and services to our youth outside to complement PACT’s core offerings. Such youth focused partner agencies include Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) for assessments/counselling, Youth Employment Services (YES) for employment counselling, Frontier College for GED preparation, and the YMCA of Toronto, which provides space for our coaches and clients to meet for their weekly coaching sessions and many other services.

Program Impact

PACT LifePlan Mentor-Coaching is designed to stop the highest-risk youth from reoffending and to turn their lives completely around. By breaking the cycle of one future habitual criminal, PACT can save society millions of dollars per youth in social costs such as incarceration; break the intergenerational cycle of violence; and eliminate the costs and pain of victimization related to each youth’s behavior.

Since its inception in 2004, and through direct referrals from youth court judges, PACT has accepted a total of 65 high risk youth into our one year coaching program. And although success looks different for every individual, and not all make it through the full year, PACT has had an enormous positive impact on a great number of these youth in keeping them out of custody and many have gone through remarkable transformations to establish productive and law abiding lives. Please see our first featured video that follows one of these youth named Akeem through this amazing process of hope.

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

“Based on Police estimates, there are between 100 and 160 youth gangs across the City of Toronto (about double the number in 2000. Their longevity, ethnic composition, and size vary considerably. Gangs tend to actively recruit within high school and members are relatively young (13-30).”

“One third of residents and business owners in Toronto’s 13 Priority Areas reported that gang activity had increased in their neighbourhood in the year and a half prior to a 2007 survey.” (Toronto Vital Signs®, 2009)

Participant Vignette

The system is predictable. Get arrested, get bail or a short sentence, return to the streets and restart the cycle.

At first glance, Les Magyar was just another loser in that system. The grade 11 dropout had lived in 21 group homes by the age of 16. A long jail term loomed for the boy, out on bail for charges that included assault and harassment.

But one day as he sat in the prisoner’s box at the Ontario Court of Justice, his life took a promising twist.

Magyar was the first inductee into a remarkable initiative, The PACT Lifeplan Mentor-Coaching Program, in which ending the cycle of poverty, violence and crime is more about coaching and less about jail.

Today, Magyar lives in his own apartment and holds down a steady job. Yet that December day he was just another youth choking the courts and costing taxpayers millions.

The moment Magyar sat with his Life Coach to write his life-plan goals, things started to change. Some things on his list: Stay in school; stay out of fights; control your temper; eat right; get a job. For a year, several nights a week, Les would meet with his Life Coach and participate in PACT Lifeskills courses. In cooking class he learned to make healthy food. In film class he made a public service announcement about street kids.

Les Magyar is moving on, holding on to a fragile peace in a world where he was once at war. Meanwhile, he has passed the torch to a number of kids in the program whose circumstances are eerily similar to his.

Not every kid will make it. Several will end up rearrested or back in jail. But that’s okay, according to Judge Rick Blouin. “These kids are costing society and the justice system tens of millions of dollars. The heartache and distress of poverty and violence are propagated into ensuing generations. Even if one in ten graduates, it’s a success.”

To read the full story of Les please see here.

LifeSkills & Community Service Projects:

PACT takes a holistic approach to creating peace across Toronto.

It is important to ensure that at-risk youth are channeled into skills programs to “ignite a passion” and lead to higher education or employment opportunities. Life and job skills need to be taught to all youth, and especially those who are at risk or in trouble with the law.

PACT has developed a suite of introductory and experiential life-skills projects that offer a positive opportunity for high-risk youth and youth in conflict with the law to learn practical skills development that they do not learn in the school system.

PACT empowers youth, fosters team-building behaviour and develops self-esteem and a sense of accomplishment while acting as a stepping-stone to future gainful employment and/or more advanced training, apprenticeship or educational opportunities.

These projects are designed to ignite a passion in youth and give them career and job opportunities. Moreover, PACT Life-skills projects offer a positive opportunity for at–risk youth and allow youth in conflict with the law to make restitution for their behaviour through contribution, thereby allowing them to begin constructive reintegration back into the community

PACT LifeSkills Projects:

• PACTFilm - A project where youth make short films and public service announcements.
• PACTCooking - A culinary project teaching youth how to cook healthy food from around the world.
• PACTForestry - An urban reforestation project that connects youth to the natural world.
• PACTRocks - An interactive music workshop culminating in a community concert.
• PACTMAGIC - A magically interactive workshop teaching youth easy to learn tricks.
• PACTFarm & “Grow to Learn”- An urban agricultural project connected to schools and communities.
• PACTBuild - A woodworking and construction project building garden sheds and bird houses.
• PACTFashion - A real world sewing and design project.

Please visit our website for more detailed descriptions of our project.

Funding and Program Partners

PACT partners with many different organizations and agencies from within the community that work with at-risk youth including Probation, TDSB, Youth Employment Services (YES), Covenant House, St. Stephen’s Community House, Operation Springboard and Associated Youth Service of Peel (AYSP). Many of these organizations refer youth into the PACT Lifeskills projects.

Some of the key funders of our LifeSkills projects (past and reoccurring) have been Ace Bakery (PACTFarm and PACT Cooking), TD Friends of the Environment (Grow to Learn and PACTForestry), Evergreen (Grow to Learn and PACTForestry), Fabricland (PACTFashion) and several Toronto based Rotary Clubs (PACTFilm and PACTRocks).

Program Impact

PACT introduced its first PACTCooking lifeskills project in 2005. Since then, PACT has expanded its offering to eight projects and PACT leaders have worked with over 2500 at-risk and underprivileged youth. These youth have fulfilled community service hours, upgraded their resumes with practical real world job skills and simply stayed busy and connected during the after school and summer hours when many unsupervised youth tend to otherwise get into trouble.

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

“The youth unemployment rate surpassed 20% in June 2009, up 5% in just one year and 4% higher than the national rate.” (Toronto’s Vital Signs®, 2009)

Participant Vignette

Alejandra had fled South America to get her sons Mauricio and Fredy away from the drug cartel to which their father was exposing the boys. She left her husband and country to bring her boys to Canada for a chance at a drug-and-crime-free life.

Alejandra brought them to Toronto, but as a single mother with no support network, some of the negative imprinting stayed with them. While in Canada, the boys were starting to get involved in stealing cars and doing drugs.

The boys got caught and charged and as part of their sentence their probation officer assigned them to get involved in PACTRocks, one of PACT’s eight lifeskills projects for at-risk youth.

The program is the first support Alejandra has had for her boys; it has not only changed their life but hers as well. Where once she was afraid and fearful for them, she is now proud of her boys interest in this program and in music.

PACTROCKS was designed as an educational lifeskills project for youth in conflict with the law, but it has quickly branched out to serve disenfranchised youth, youth in low-income areas as well as those in need of positive, creative self-esteem building experiences in the community.

“Music has changed their lives,” said Alejandra. “For the first time Mauricio and Fredy would rather spend hours on music instead of stealing and doing drugs, PACT made them feel welcome and encouraged them so much they feel hope for the first time in their new country, something they have never had before.”