Solutions to Indo-Canadian youth violence

But I wonder why more parents are not up in arms and saying, in one unified voice that this behavior of our youth is not acceptable and is not tolerable. While our community is taking ownership of the problems and is trying hard to do something about it, it does not help the society when mainstream media paint the whole community with the violence brush. Our community has no control over soft laws on marijuana growing operations, availability of guns, and police inability to solve homicides. Mainstream media, at the same time, fail to print the positive aspects of our community.

In this article I want to lay out in simple words what, in my view, needs to be done, indeed, must be done by our community to address this problem.

* The community must understand that there is no quick fix for this serious problem. This did not happen overnight. Expecting quick results will lead to disappointment, frustration and finger-pointing at organizations that are doing volunteer work. This further leads to discouragement for the volunteers. If there are going to be quick results that will only come from organizations that are equipped and trained to help the police make arrests, solve murder cases and break up some gangs, not simply volunteer organizations.

* Further, we must understand that only trained professionals and groups, such as counsellors, are qualified to intervene with those youth that are already deep into the world of gangs and violence. We should support the abilities of those kind of groups to succeed in that difficult endeavour. We also need to understand that some of the youth who are involved in drugs, violence and gangs unfortunately may only be able to be helped if they want to get help.

* I’m not saying to give up on those youth who are already involved in drugs and gangs. But for those of us who are not qualified or trained to assist them, our foremost efforts should be on prevention, guiding our young children, steering them away from making terrible choices. Work with them starting from birth. I believe we can achieve that by creating education and awareness with parents. Our parents need to learn skills so that they can spend time with children, build healthy relationships with them, understand the needs of children caught between two cultures, build self-esteem, give positive discipline and act as positive role models. For example, VIRSA has developed a very effective parenting program which parents are benefiting from when they attend and parents have given us very positive feedback about that program

* We need our children to interact with young positive role models, which we have many in our community through school-based mentorship programs, sports based mentorship programs, and involve our kids in other activities.

VIRSA has implemented school-based and sports-based mentorship programs in collaboration with School District 36 (Surrey) and Surrey RCMP. Approximately 1,000 kids have attended this program during the last eight months. These prevention programs will however show results in the years to come.

Intervention programs:

* At this time our families have no counselling services for youth at risk or counselling services for families of troubled youth. I believe we need a 24-hour help-line where families can call in total confidentiality for counseling services. If such a counseling service is provided by trained community counselors who speak the language, and understand our cultural belief systems, I believe many problems may be solved before they become serious. We are working hard to provide this service to the community.

* Many of our young boys and girls who are at risk and show risky behavior must be supported to save them from going on the wrong path. This service should be provided by youth outreach workers. VIRSA at this time works with approximately 25 such outreach workers in Surrey. They speak to the school kids and kids at risk and bring them into the basketball program in Surrey in order to help them stay out of trouble. They are extremely effective and much needed. This program should be expanded to the whole of the Lower mainland.

Proactive intervention by police:

You have heard police saying that the gangland style murder victims were ‘known to police.’ We believe if that is the case, police should inform and sit down with the parents. Parents, police, and counseling services may find a solution to save a life. Sikh societies of the lower mainland are working with the police to provide this kind of service to the community. Inspector Kash Heed of Vancouver Police Department is already trying this method.

Integrated Gang Task Force:

Sixty-three officers are working full-time to investigate violent crimes. This team is not going to be successful unless parents and community work with them to stop the terrible loss of lives. The task force at the same time has to communicate with the community to win its trust. All these efforts require the whole community to come together to solve this problem. Together we can help out children stay out of trouble. Perhaps then our community will get the more positive image that it deserves.

Source: http://www.voiceonline.com – The Indo Canadian Voice Newspaper