Since its arrival in Canada 125 years ago, the South Asian community, despite so many road blocks, difficulties and challenges has never looked back. Our ancestors here faced multiple problems. However, rather than giving up they moved on. Due their sacrifices and hard work, to-day, the South Asian community numbering almost 1.3 million has become one of the largest ,most resilient ,generous and powerful communities in Canada. Be it politics, business, education, technology, sports, media, people of South Asian heritage are in the forefront. Unfortunately, this on-going progress has also brought with it some problems. These include youth violence, drugs and gangs. To its credit, the community has been addressing this problem head on for the past several years. As a continuation of the on-going process, South Asian Community Coalition Against Youth Violence (SACCAYV) held a forum last Thursday, October 9 at the Riverside Signature Banquet Hall in Surrey.
This forum was culmination of unique collaboration between academic research led by Dr. Gira Bhatt and her Acting –Together-Community-University Research Alliance (AT-CURA)team at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Indira Prahst at Langara College, law enforcement led by RCMP,CFSEU-BC, VPD and the community led by SACCAYV and various Gurdwaras in Metro Vancouver. Some of the main objectives of this forum were to provide an update to the community. This included RCMP organized Sikh Summit held in Chilliwack in 2013, research by AT-CURA and by Indira Prahst at Langara College, youth forums held by MOSAIC. SACCAYV and its partners feel that youth violence cannot be treated in isolation. Young people are an integral part of the family and community .As such; in order to help youth it is important to strengthen the family.
SACCAYV Steering Committee member and MOSAIC’s director of communications and development, Ninu Kang welcomed the guests and gave a brief overview of the program. The forum was divided into two parts. The first segment included welcoming remarks by me as the chairperson of SACCAYV, address by RCMP Assistant Commissioner Dan Malo and presentations by Dr. Gira Bhatt, Indira Prahst and Rubina Mudhar. In his address, Dan Malo gave a broad picture of youth and gangs in this province and commended SACCAYV’s efforts in bringing the community to-gether to address this issue.Dr. Gira Bhatt went over the research findings of the AT-CURA project. She emphasized the importance of focusing on strength- based youth model. Their main objective was to find out what keeps our youth from joining gangs and other inappropriate activities. Indira Prahst presented the research findings of the youth gangs and alienation project of AT-CURA as well as current anti-gang initiatives undertaken at Langara College. Finally, Rubina Mudhar described the lead taken by MOSAIC in connecting with the youth through various workshops and other youth led initiatives. A fairly comprehensive handout detailing some of these programs/initiatives was provided to all of the participants.
The second part consisted of round table activity in which participants were encouraged to discuss the connection between youth violence and family relationships. Each group was requested to discuss the related issues in this regard and then come up with recommendations to address these concerns. To their credit, the participants did an excellent job in this regard. SACCAYV will compile their responses and share them with the community through various sources. These recommendations compliment a resource booklet compiled by CFSEU-BC recently. It is titled Understanding Youth and Gangs and is in English. SACCAYV, with financial support from various Gurdwaras and community minded organizations, is in the process of getting it translated into Punjabi. Once the Punjabi version is ready printed copies of the booklet will be printed and distributed widely in the community. As part of this forum certificates of appreciation were presented to the Gurdwara presidents and other sponsors who made a financial contribution in this regard.
On behalf of SACCAYV I would like to thank all of the participants, the Gurdwara reps, AT-CURA, MOSAIC, Langara College, police officials, Riverside Signature Banquet Hall, Triple A Movies, media and everyone else for making this forum such a great success.
Balwant Sanghera is the Chairperson, South Asian Community Coalition Against Youth Violence.
