By Youth For Youth
The By Youth For Youth - Tenancy Rights Project is aimed at informing homeless and/or at-risk youth of their tenancy rights, by highlighting what it means to be at-risk of homelessness, the landlord tenant board, as well as the rights one has as a tenant renting from a landlord.
This project was created and carried out by the York Region's Youth Strategy in partnership with our collaborators and different committees, with the youth council leading the way. Furthermore, the By Youth For Youth Project was jointly funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health Foundation.
Watch all the By Youth For Youth videos here
Outside of the videos, the team also began using the information they acquired to create different presentations that could be brought into the community in order to build more awareness around the topics of youth homelessness and tenancy rights. One of the outcomes of the By Youth For Youth - Tenancy Rights Project is the Call to Action, which is our initiative that is aimed at bringing more authentic youth engagement and youth voice into communities within the York Region. The team also noticed that their research and the connections they made were extremely valuable, so they decided to use those contacts and knowledge pieces to create a digital resource to help homeless and/or at-risk youth find organizations to help them with their specific needs. You can see this on our resources page!
The project began with the team discussing their lived experiences with low-income housing that increased their at-risk experiences. They noticed several commonalities, like broken locks, shared amenities, and rent increases. The team chose 5 topics and split into sub-groups to do research on these different subjects. The research helped to create well-informed scripts, which then underwent an equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) process.
The EDI process was completed in partnership with inclusivity professors at York University. When the scripts were finalized after edits based on the EDI reviews, the team began working with local talents to capture their vision. Individuals who joined for the video creation process included an animator, Fahdad Atin, a director and cinematographer, Sean Sweeney, as well as skilled actors, Sydney Adegaye, Richelle Brown, Rewan Hedefa, and Jay Lee.
