Agency Partners, Youth Participants & Sailor's Spotlight

Agency Spotlight

Youth Employment Services (YES)
 
Job Reach is a partnership program with YES and the Broad Reach Foundation for Youth Leaders. This five-week intensive program serving a selected group of disadvantaged and vulnerable youth. Job Reach focuses on developing the practical skills needed to identify, secure and maintain employment through a positive life experience. Job Reach offers pre-employment skills workshops in the classroom, and experiential based learning on board a 40-foot sailboat. The workshops prepare them for their job search by helping them prepare their resume and developing interview skills. The sailing portion offers them a tangible certification and the opportunity to create a reference source for their practical assistance as instructors in training. Each participant is paid a stipend, meal and travel allowance during this time which is paid jointly by Broad Reach Foundation and YES.  The experiences and skills gained are unique and stay with the participants for a lifetime.

The Job Reach program is generously sponsored by ING Canada.

Sailor Spotlight - Jordan Panton in an interview with Oliver Bertin                                   

  Two years ago, Jordan Panton was painfully shy.  He was keen, but he had a speech impediment that destroyed his confidence and left him unsure of his place in the world around him.  At 20-years-old he chats comfortably with people twice his age.  He mentors younger kids in his new community, has lots of friends and a newfound goal in life – to finish community college and go to university to train as a social worker.  “I would like to work with seniors, a lot,” he said, quietly but with assurance.  “I want to make their lives more happy.”

  Jordan has come a long way in the past two years, thanks in part to Broad Reach Foundation for Youth Leaders, a Toronto charity.  Broad Reach uses a simple method to help youths-at-risk. It takes them sailing.  But its mission is far more profound.  It uses sailboats to help troubled youths expand their horizons and build their self-esteem, their confidence and their sense of responsibility.  “Sailing teaches them to work as part of a team,” said Marie Taylor, Executive Director and sole staff member of Broad Reach.  “Many youths are self-survivors because of their home environment.  But sailing teaches them to co-operate and trust again.  They learn they are important to the team and can make real contributions.”

  In 2008, 330 youths came sailing with Broad Reach in four short months, a busy schedule indeed.  Jordan came to Broad Reach through Youth Employment Services, while other youths came through the Yonge Street Mission, Covenant House, Aboriginal groups and the youth courts.  Some of the youths were homeless; others were challenged in one way or another.  Most were lonely or troubled kids from the poorer areas of Toronto, but all were looking for acceptance and a chance to get away from the dust and concrete of their home environment.  “I love sailing,” said one teenage girl as she stood on the deck of the boat, looking around her at the bright sunshine, the clean air and the sparkling water.  “I never hear sirens here. At home, I hear sirens all the time.”  “Everybody is so nice to us,” another said.  “There are no bullies.  Nobody threatens us.  I can relax.”

  The youths participate in the program, accompanied by a social worker or agency representative.  Some take part in multi-day programs, go club racing, help with painting and maintenance or at fundraising events.  There are no rules about participation just if they say they are coming, then turn up.  Many of the youths take part in a formal program, a technique that gives them a structure, a goal and a plaque that they can be proud of.  Some youths have taken their Canadian Yachting Association (CYA) certificates, their Pleasure Craft Operator Card (PCOC) or a club certificate.  Others just go because they love it.

  Sailing is a fine way for youths to spend their time, and Jordan is proof of that.  He is one of the more than 200 youths who participated in the Broad Reach sailing program last year and one of the many success stories, as last year he came as a peer mentor.  Jordan was chatting with us in a coffee shop just off Bloor and Bathurst in downtown Toronto, surrounded by noisy students, busy tapping away on their laptops.  He talked enthusiastically about the many changes in his life since he joined Broad Reach, and the impact it has made on his life.  “I love sailing,” he said, comparing his time on the water with his noisy home neighbourhood.  “It’s hard to find anywhere so quiet where I live.  There’s this large expanse of water where I can go wherever I want.  It gives me a real sense of freedom.”

  He told us of the many wonderful people he has met through Broad Reach, and the horizons that have opened.  “I was a bit scared to go into a yacht club because I thought people who drive boats would be really …,” he hesitated to find the word, looking around the room with his eyes opened wide.  “But they were really nice to me.  They talked to me.  They showed me how to do things on the boat.”  It is the little things that so impressed him.  He was caught one day in a cold, hard rain without his coat.  “On the way back, it began to rain very hard and the people with me covered me up with a sail cover.  That was so nice of them.”

  “Nice people” is a constant refrain among the Broad Reach kids.  They are astonished when strangers are nice to them and they soon try to be nice to others.  Jordan started to help other kids, those “who come from tougher circumstances than me.”  At first he was shy, but he talked to them and found they got along.   Pretty soon, they were chatting away, sailing a boat together like a well-oiled team.

  Jordan is a very bright youth, with a wide vocabulary that includes words like perspective, judgmental and proactive.  But he has been held back since childhood by a speech impediment that has affected his life and his career.  He’s lacked confidence, is shy of strangers and sometimes stutters.  That, of course, just makes the stutter worse.  But Broad Reach helped give him the confidence to put his stutter into perspective.  He has earned his PCOC and CYA certificates and says he has done “every job there is to do on a boat.”  He has worked happily as a member of the boat-handling team and helped mentor other youths.  “I had never taught things to other people,” he said.  “I never thought I would be a good teacher, but apparently I was very good.”

  It wasn’t long after Jordan took control of a boat that he decided to take control of his life.  He realized that the stutter wasn’t very important, that he was a bright and talented youth, a really nice kid who had a great future ahead of him.  And that’s when he decided to shove his stutter into the background and move on.  “I don’t want to make my speech the main focus of things,” he said.  “I’d like to focus on more than that.”  And the stutter faded away.  “Broad Reach put me into a situation where I had to talk, and that really helped me,” he said.  “I thought people would judge me because I can’t talk to people easily.  But I found I can talk to them and they listen.  That gave me confidence.”

  Now, Jordan talks with great pride about his career, his parents and his baby sister, the math whiz at a downtown high school.  “My mother says she is so proud of her two wonderful children,” Jordan said.  “She’s so proud of us”, and then he graciously thanked us for choosing to interview him, another first in his life.

An interview with Oliver Bertin, Broad Reach volunteer.

Broad Reach is proud to have been able to support Jordan's sailing adventures and are thrilled that he chooses to stay with us and share his new passion with other youth as a peer mentor.  Sailing can be a turning point in a young persons life and can become a positive part of the rest of their life, it can even become a career.