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Youth in Focus

Two women working at The Neighbourhood Organization

Melissa Kelly, Cyrus Sundar Singh, Anna Triandafyllidou

Youth in Focus (YiF) is a collaborative partnership between The Neighbourhood Organization (TNO) and a research team based at CERC Migration. The objective of the project is to better understand the needs of youth living in the Thorncliffe Park and Flemingdon Park neighbourhoods and to identify what can be done by neighbourhood organizations such as TNO to address these needs.

  1. What are the needs of youth living in Thorncliffe Park and Flemingdon Park neighbourhoods as they relate to the domains of family, school, and employment?
  2. What are the current gaps in programming for youth in the two neighbourhoods under study?
  3. What can be done to better support youth at the neighbourhood level?

Thorncliffe Park and Flemingdon Park have a high number of young people, many of whom have recently arrived in Canada with their families. While it is widely recognized that newcomer youth often face challenges such as difficulties with school, employment, and experiences of racism and discrimination, there is limited research on the specific needs of newcomer youth in neighbourhoods with high immigrant populations. Additionally, there is little exploration of what types of interventions outside the formal school system would best address these needs. Through this project, TNO and CERC Migration will work together to address this research gap. The project will focus on TNO’s recently opened Youth Wellness Hub, which offers holistic services to the youth of Thorncliffe Park and Flemingdon Park—two neighbourhoods with large populations of newcomer youth. It will examine the approach taken by the Hub to address the needs of local youth and explore ways to enhance the Hub’s effectiveness.

The project will collect information through interviews and surveys with local stakeholders in the Thorncliffe Park and Flemingdon Park neighbourhoods, including service providers, youth, and their parents. In addition, youth will be invited to engage in a digital storytelling project where they can share their experiences of living in either of the two neighbourhoods.

The Neighbourhood Organization (TNO)

Preliminary results will likely be available in Spring 2025.

Fall 2025

SSHRC

neighbourhood, youth hub, newcomer youth