Vaheguru ji ka khalsa,
Vaheguru ji ki fatheh!
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The last three days Canadians have been talking about the Boxing Day shooting death of 15-year old Jane Creba on Yonge Street in Toronto and the gang rivalry, inner-city youth drug problems, poverty and marginalizing of minority groups in metropolitan cities. As they are prone to doing, many politicians slithered out of their resting and made bold statements on their “commitment” to providing remedies. Politicians thus far have not really been able to provide a long-term solution, and not more than a rare few have actually put themselves in the positions of the youth and tried to understand their perspective.
Every few weeks there is a story about Indo Canadian youth violence in Vancouver, or African Canadian youth violence in Toronto, or some other minority group of youth dealing with some problem in some community somewhere in the world. How did these young people get to this state? What drives them, and what turns them around? Each city has its own problems, and there may not be a panacea for all of them – although there are some common threads. Marginalization is one of them, which is also linked with the lack of empathy, the lack of self-worth, and the lack of accomplishment.
In order to feel a sense of identity, self esteem, and responsibility to your community, you need to be provided with an atmosphere of opportunities, healthy challenges, understanding, support, and love. It requires a balance of government support, grassroots charity work, religious and faith groups, teachers, and parents working together. The problem is – very often these five groups can’t stay on the same page for long.
And when it comes to youth that are already involved in problematic lifestyles such as gangs, drug-dealing, prostitution, and theft, what is it that turns them around? Today on BC-CTV there was a news story about a young man who had stolen almost 1000 cars – sometimes upto 25 a day – while high on crystal meth – and so many times after being arrested for stealing a car he would be released on bail the following day. He strongly criticized the judicial system in BC and their handling of punishment for car-thefts, and in fact it was after he was sentenced to five months in jail that he managed to straighten himself out, get into a drug rehabilitation program, and denouce his previous lifestyle. He declared on television that the sentencing for crimes involving drugs and theft were ridiculous, and claimed that he was turning his life around.
There are other examples when people who were heavily into drugs found a complete change in their life after they adopted religion and worked to improve their spiritual life. In such cases young people would go so far as to, for Sikhs, become amritdhari, or for Christians “find the light of Jesus,” and completely switch their surroundings.
However those are some more fortunate youth, who may have had the right opportunity at the right time, and may have realized the potential to right their wrongs with the support in their friends, family, or congregation. Some young people don’t even have that – how can you reach them?
Politicians aren’t doing enough, teachers don’t have time to do more, charities and religious groups don’t have enough money or organization to do it, and parents don’t know what to do… it’s all very, very overwhelming.
Please share your comments here or e-mail us at sikhyouth@shaw.ca.
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Vaheguru ji ka khalsa,
Vaheguru ji ki fatheh!
City Lost its Innocence Long Before Teen Fell – Christie Blatchfod, the Globe and Mail
Blatchford Speaks – Greg Bester, sinisterthoughts.blogspot.com
Solving Problems of Inner-City Youth – Japnaam Singh, www.japnaamsingh.com
Related:
“Politicians aren’t doing enough, teachers don’t have time to do more, charities and religious groups don’t have enough money or organization to do it, and parents don’t know what to do… it’s all very, very overwhelming.”
I don’t agree. Parents do know what is wrong and what is right for their kids and how to raise them. Some Sikh Canadian parents seem to priortize houses, Big screen TVs, nice Cars etc. over teaching good values and spending time with the kids. I bet half of them don’t even know or care what the kids are doing, lie to their kids, cheat themselves, don’t read to their kids, check their homework.
Vaheguru ji ka khalsa,
Vaheguru ji ki fatheh!
Thanks for your comments jee!
Actually parents do not know what is wrong, and what is right. We were not taking the blame off the parents – we were saying the parents are ignorant. Probably by choice. They don’t know what their kids are doing, and they don’t know how to stop it because they don’t even know it’s happening. That was the intention of saying “parents don’t know what to do.”
They are in extreme denial and ignorance and they sometimes refuse to become aware of their childrens behaviour because it hurts their self-esteem, self-worth, and stature in society although they don’t realize that ignoring their childrens’ problems will only lead to bigger dents in their social status or self-esteem because the children will only go further into worse habits.
They would rather live in the short bliss of their present ignorance, rather than deal with the long-term challenges of improving their childrens lives through providing a loving and caring atmosphere with support, advice, good leadership and role models, and effective disciplinary techniques.
There are only a few parents – at least in the Indo Canadian community in BC – who are actually innocently ignorant and would do something if they were more aware of the problems. The rest of them don’t know what to do because they choose to avoid it. The media, the youth, and other more involved parents have to change this and make “careless” parents more aware and active and tell them what is going on , what they can do, and why it is so important to do it right away.
-Sevadars,
BC Sikh Youth.com
Vaheguru ji ka khalsa,
Vaheguru ji ki fatheh!
“I bet half of them don’t even know or care what the kids are doing, lie to their kids, cheat themselves, don’t read to their kids, check their homework.”
i don’t know if i agree with that. We should give more props to the parents, most of them are doing the best that they can – most of us didn’t take any parenting lessons right – it’s harder than it looks