By Neil Armstrong
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| Roderick Brereton and Farley Flex, founders of Urban Rez Solutions, at the launch of the Say It Loud youth initiative in Brampton, Ontario |
A national initiative to support Black youth across Canada
has been launched in Peel Region and organizers have plans to hold similar
events in fifteen cities, in total, throughout the country.
Say It Loud aimed at youth, ages 14 to 29, promotes Black
pride and positive cultural identity through the areas of technology,
entrepreneurship, social initiatives, and culinary, visual, fashion and
performing arts.
Roderick Brereton and Farley Flex, founders of Urban Rez
Solutions, a social transformative change agency specializing in empowering
individuals and organizations, are the creators of this initiative that seeks
to reach 10,000 youth during the International Decade for People of African
Descent.
Speaking at a meeting of stakeholders in Brampton, Ontario
on March 6, Flex said in order to support the youth his agency needed to engage
the people around them, mainly adults who work directly with youth and adults
who care about them.
“The initiative is meant to debunk the negative stereotypes
that have been out there in the media for far too long, and which from our
perspective are predominantly sports-related, hip hop-related and
crime-related. That’s the narrative that the media offers, that’s the narrative
that not just the outside community believes but many of people within the
Black community believe it as well.”
He said they have created a platform to showcase the
brilliance of Black youth in specific categories.
The intention is for “our youth to see a sense of normalcy
as to how capable we are, how many other youth like them are interested in
those areas and excelling in those areas and create a platform where they can
interact, influence one another, inspire one another, collaborate with one
another.”
Brereton said they have held similar stakeholder meetings in
Halifax, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Windsor and Ottawa.
Those remaining will be held in Hamilton, Toronto (east and
west), Durham Region and Montreal.
By March 31 there will be a national open call for
submissions and the deadline for those will be May 31.
After the submissions deadline has passed, an adjudication
unit will sift through them looking “for the loudest submissions so the
submissions that exhibit Black pride and cultural identity in terms of how loud
you are saying it and what impact that will have on the Black community, in
terms of perception and in actual sustainable impact.”
Brereton said after the adjudication process has been
completed there will be a percentage of these submissions that will go on to
the pop-ups and here the youth “who said it the loudest” will be able to
showcase their ideas, concepts or what they have implemented in the various
categories.
From there one entity will be chosen to represent the region
or city that they are in to go to Ottawa in February 2021 where the
twenty-fifth anniversary of Black History Month will be marked.
The Say It Loud national Black youth summit will also be
held in that city at that time.
Say It Loud is funded by the Government of Canada from
November 2019 to March 2021,
however, Flex and Brereton have a sustainability strategy in place to find
financial partners along the way.
“Because we have eight categories the sensible thing to do
is to find corporations and entities that can champion those particular
categories that identify with their brand.”
The Say It Loud (sayitloudcanada.com) website will also
offer support in mentorship, wellness, financial literacy, grant writing,
business plan writing, image consulting, publicity and marketing.
“And that will be the part where the mature adults or
experienced adults will be able to contribute also,” said Brereton.
“It is focusing on youth but the better of the likelihood
for youth to succeed is more to take the village to contribute, the wraparound
support to move the youth forward.
In Peel Region, Urban Rez Solutions is partnering with ResQ
Youth International Inc. to outreach to stakeholders and spread the word about
the national initiative.
[This story has been published in the North American Weekly Gleaner, March 19-25, 2020.]
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