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YAC, Police and City identifying unhealthy relationships

Members of the North Bay Police, Mayor Al McDonald and Youth Advisory Committee representatives speak to media on Monday morning. Photo by Mark Pare.


Members of the North Bay Police, Mayor Al McDonald and Youth Advisory Committee representatives speak to media on Monday morning. Photo by Mark Pare.

An unhealthy relationship affects everyone in their everyday lives, and getting the message out to youth was the message from the Youth Advisory Council (YAC), and its partners.

Dakota Allerston, a student representative from St. Joseph-Scollard Hall says a lot of kids don’t even know what an unhealthy relationship is and apart from it, don’t know what to do or where to go if they are in one.

“We want to provide them with that outlet and give them suggestions,” he told media at a press conference held at City Hall on Monday.

“You can go to a teacher, you can go to a doctor, you can go to a family friend, you can go to a councillor and we have so many great councillors in the City of North Bay so I think we do a great job of providing them with that outlet and explaining to them what you can do if you’re in this type of situation.”

Also present at the conference was Mayor Al McDonald and a few members of the North Bay Police Service. A video was shown identifying several unhealthy relationships that take place.

Allerston says in order for this initiative to work, they need to engage student interest. He says students these days aren’t going to be interested in something “if it’s not the media’s perspective of ‘cool’,” but one thing they did to address that can be seen by who is in the group.

“Our YAC groups in the school aren’t just of the ‘preppy’ kids, if you will, they’re of everybody,” he said, “It’s really diversified. We have kids who are into sports, we have kids who are into comic book club, we have kids that as myself that are in the student administrative council. We really have a good mix of everybody and I think that’s what makes it cool because it addresses all the cliques in our high schools.”

He adds that teachers’ advisors also play a part in YAC, so that students can go to them as well if there’s an issue.

Police Chief Paul Cook felt this was an appropriate time to launch the second stage of the YAC initiative, as Monday marked the beginning of Crime Prevention Week. He says a small committee was gathered and they applied to the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services, receiving some funding through the Proceeds of Crime grant.

“That (grant) enabled us to partner with TWG Communications to put together an initiative that’s going to raise awareness in relation to healthy relationships and provide young people the tools they need to go for support if they’re involved in an unhealthy relationship or they know somebody else who is. We all know that for certain young people, they’re not comfortable speaking to a parent or a teacher or perhaps a police officer, that’s why we’ve provided some leadership training for peers and identified student leaders that these people can turn to and talk to.”

Cook says reception from the youth has been very positive.

“You can see there’s a lot of energy in the room and clearly some bright young future leaders within our community represented in all the different schools,” he said, “Each individual committee is rolling this out to the schools with the assistance of the video that was launched here today and that will provide the opportunity for them to engage in discussions with the students about who they are and what they’re all about and what they can do to help break the cycle of violence and unhealthy relationships in our community.”

In his Grade 4 year, Allerston sent a letter to Cook and through it, became the official founder of an annual “Police Camp”, that has been held for young people looking to know more about the police.

Allerston, who Cook called a “true visionary”, says he’s got a lot of support from teachers, administration members and the school superintendant. He feels you can’t walk through the hallway of a high school anymore without kids making inappropriate comments.

“For example, they’ll make homophobic remarks and they just use it in a daily instance,” he says, “They don’t understand that these comments, even though they’re so common now in today’s society, are still hurtful so when you walk down the hallway and you hear something like that, you can tell there’s a need for this because kids are starting to use those derogatory terms in their everyday vocabulary, I think there’s a need to address it.”

Allerston says at his school, they haven’t done too much promotion-wise but that students at St. Joseph-Scollard Hall will get a presentation during Period 3 classes tomorrow.

McDonald also announced that the video shown at the press conference will soon be available on the City of North Bay website. Allerston says he was happy to hear that and he is open to other ideas to get the word out.

The sign says it all.

“Speak Up, Speak Out, Be Real. Healthy Relationships Don’t Hurt. You Have a Voice.”