GET UP STAND UP

GET UP STAND UP:

YOUTH

LEADING

THE

WAY...

hen Trillium Board and staff looked at our portfolio of grants under the new program directions, we realized that we had not yet tapped into the vital, imaginative energy of young people in Ontario. While we had a number of projects where adults did things for youth, we had not succeeded very well in getting resources directly into the hands of young people themselves. Thus Get Up Stand Up was born.

With this special Request for Proposals, we did not want to change our direction as much as focus our attention on the ideas and vigour that young people themselves bring to important social issues of the day. Where many programs saw youth as a problem to be solved, we saw them as a significant force for positive social change. So we asked young people to give us their best shot: tell us what you would do about the critical matters in your lives if you had some money to do it.

There were important features to our request. The vision for the project, its planning and implementation had to be handled by the young people themselves. Adults could advise and support (it didn't seem fair to leave them out of the fun) but young people had to make and live with all the critical decisions.

We asked children as young as nine and young adults as old as twenty-nine to think about their concerns for things like education, employment, neighbourhood life, peer pressure, racism, and violence, and challenged them to come up with ideas which would improve their community. We encouraged them to employ different kinds of media in their proposals: theatre, art, video, Internet, print, or conferences. Finally, we wanted them to create concrete goals for their work which would have a lasting impact: a tall order indeed.

Armed with a commitment of at least $500,000 from the Board of Directors, Trillium staff and an advisory committee comprised of youth volunteers from across the province spread the word to schools, libraries, youth groups, agencies: any place where young people might congregate. The committee is co-chaired by Board members Jabril Abdulle and Mary Jean Cormier. Other members include Aida Abraha, Karen Burton, Mei Chen, Tamba Dhar, Tyance Fiddler, Lyndon Goveas, Sherry Martin, Roxanne Mayer, Tara McArthur, Jennifer Miller, Linelle Mogado and Trupti Panchal.

Through the spring and summer we talked to hundreds of people about the opportunity that Get Up Stand Up represented. As the September 30th deadline approached, many of us sat nervously waiting for applications to show up. Suppose no one came to our party?

We shouldn't have worried. Over four hundred groups responded to the call with vision and a strength of determination to make a difference in their world. Young people wanted to do something about issues like the environment, violence in their schools, the need to ensure that everyone was included in their communities or to make sure that their classmates had enough to eat during the day. We were astounded by the imagination that had flowered in front of us.

The hard work for the Foundation was making choices. With the support of the advisory committee, the top 77 proposals went forward to the Executive Committee, who confirmed grants totalling $602,400.

The real work for the young people comes next. With some resources behind them and many goals ahead of them, they must now get down to the nitty-gritty tasks of working together, implementing strategies, managing money, and all the responsibilities that are a part of our aspirations for a better world. Trillium staff will be available for support and our advisory committee members have committed themselves as peer mentors to the projects.

In all of this, we are already assured that we have done the right thing. Not all projects will succeed in everything they set out to do. No doubt mistakes will be made along the way. But the young people themselves have made a tremendous, collective statement that they will dare to take on the future with hope and vision, and we are honoured to support them.

For more information contact Program Managers Bruce MacDougall at (416)961-0194 ext. 204 or bmacd@trilliumfoundation.org; or May Wong at (416)961-0194 ext. 201 or maywong@trilliumfoundation.org.

[A Picture of the Get Up Stand Up Advisory Committee]