Regent Park TV News - Report of the December 7, 2021, SDP Stakeholders Meeting

The following is a report of the December 7, 2021 SDP Stakeholders Meeting:

The Regent Park Social Development Plan is a community wide initiative aimed at fostering social inclusion and cohesion. The SDP Stakeholders Table is the main decision-making body responsible for the implementation of Social Development Plan. The Stakeholders Committee meets four times yearly.

SDP Membership

Intended to be a coalition of stakeholders serving or residing in Regent Park, participation on the Stakeholders Table is open to anyone including: market and TCHC residents; agencies; Grassroots Groups; Faith Groups; and businesses located in or serving Regent Park; TCHC and its development partners; City of Toronto, and other elected representatives serving Regent Park.

SDP Voting Privileges

While membership is open to all, voting privileges are restricting to residents and stakeholder groups who are actively involved on the various working committees of the SDP. The working committees are communications, community building, safety, employment & economic development community benefits, funding & resources, evaluation and benchmarks and terms of reference. Finally, the SDP Stakeholders Table is coordinated by a planning committee. If you are a resident or a stakeholder group and is interested in becoming a member and getting involved in any of the SDP committees, please contact Lindsay.Jackson@toronto.ca.

December 7, 2021 SDP Meeting

The December 7, 2021, on-line Zoom meeting of the Regent Park Stakeholders Table was chaired by SDP co-chairs, Marlene De Genova, representing RPNA Market residents and Greg Gary, the Executive Director of Kiwanis Boys and Girls Club representing the Executive Directors Network. 47 people attended the meeting.

Greg Gary began the meeting with a welcome and introductions. As part of the introductions Greg informed the table that Lloyd Pike, a former TCHC Resident Co-chair of the SDP was transitioning out of the position and will be replaced by Ismail Afrah, the new TCHC Resident Co-chair. According to Greg, Ismail will officially begin taking on his responsibilities after tonight’s meeting and will be involved in co-chairing the next SDP Stakeholders Table Meeting. Greg also mentioned that there was a possibility that Lloyd Pike could continue as a chair occupying a vacant position but the details of that position is still under review. Later in the meeting, Murshida Mueen, a resident involved on community building committee, returned to the question of the co-chair positions and how people are appointed/selected. Murshida called for a more transparent and open process for selecting chairs. Greg indicated that the planning committee will review the selection process for chairs and make sure that the process was transparent.

After the introductions, Marlene read the land acknowledge and the purpose of the SDP. Following the purpose, Marlene presented the evenings agenda.

Funding Update:

The first item on the agenda was a funding update. Diana Mavunduse, an agency representative of Dixon Hall and a member of the planning committee, reported on the SDP Visioning Session that was held on September 22, 2021. This session was held to informed residents on how they can access funding for project ideas related to the priority areas of the SDP. Over 80 residents attended the visioning session. In addition to the visioning, Lindsay Jackson, a community development staff member from the City who helps facilitate the SDP, reported that a general survey went out into the community related to funding ideas. The survey was completed by 135 residents via on line and face-to-face through the help of TCHC outreach staff. According to Lindsay the survey was used to help both the committees and individual residents get a sense of resident priorities and informed the development of project proposals.

Following Diana’s presentation Michael Rosenberg, a member of the Community Building and SDP Planning Committee reported on the Deep Dive Process held in October. The Deep Dive was a process for reviewing new and continuing project proposals for 2021 funding year. At the end of the process a total of ten projects were recommended to the City for funding in the amount of $500,000. The recommended projects were:

Youth Empower Youth (YEY), Building Leaders for Change, Youth Enrichment Academy (YEA), Regent Park TV, Hawlas’ Kitchen Food School, SDP Promotions, Women’s Engagement, Women’s Health Social Circle, RP Tours and Healing as One.

Michael highlighted some of the issues that needed to be resolved before the next Deep Dive. Michael ended his report with a review of the potential scheduling of the next deep dive funding process for 2022. Diana Mavunduse added the city is also reviewing the Deep Dive proposal and application process.

Following Michael’s report, Lindsay Jackson continued the agenda on funding by reporting on the Community Engagement, Capacity Building and Support Fund also known as the 50 k Fund. Lindsay reported that this year the $50,000 fund that is administered by the City will be allocated to the following 5 areas:

1. SDP Administrative Coordinator (15 hours weekly position closes January 4, 2022)

2. Capacity Building Workshops - to strengthen residents skills

3. The establishment of a SDP Youth Committee - to engage youth in the SDP and help define the criteria of an upcoming youth grant designated for Regent Park.

4. Barrier Reduction Funds - such as childcare , translations and food

5. Resident Engagement Events - to help more marginalize groups to participate in the SDP. The priority is seniors, disability and language barriers.

Procedure debate

Following Lindsay’s report a debate on procedure took place when Whalied Khogali, a resident member, requested to add discussion on the agenda of a November 25th incident involving community youth and police. Adonis Huggins, an Agency representative offered the opinion that an item could be added as new or other business at the end of the meeting after all other agenda items was dealt with. Denise Soueidan-O’Leary, a representative of Centre for Social Innovation and Agency co-chair of the Communication Committee, had an opposing view, reminding the table that in the past all items on the stakeholders table items are vetted through the planning committee and items cannot be raised on the floor. Denise was concerned that this would be setting a precedent as the stakeholders committee never had a new business in previous meetings. Several members weighed in on the process. Finally Greg, the co-chair, decided that Walied’s item would be discussed at the end of the meeting and Kevin was invited to begin his presentation.

Kevin Zevallos Presentation

Kevin’s Zevallos - founder of the Toronto Futbol Athletic Advancement, presentation was a proposal related to the Regent Park Athletic Grounds. Kevin began his presentation by talking about the history of the Regent Park Athletic Grounds. According to Kevin it was developed by MLSE for the Regent Park community and transferred to City of Toronto Parks, Forest and Recreation division to manage and permit its use.The grounds was officially open to the public in 2016.

According to Kevin the City Recreation has an outdated permitting system where it grandfathers and favours past permit holders before granting to new groups on a first come and first serve basis. Kevin claims this process does not serve the community and there is only a 4pm to 8 pm slot that the city has designated for Regent Park community use. Kevin claims lots of groups want to use the field and it is packed with various activities including soccer, flag football, fresbie. Kevin claims that community groups find it’s difficult to access the 4 -8 pm community time.

Kevin is interested in the development of community managed athletic grounds to make it easier for Regent Park grassroots groups and programs to access the field. Kevin also wants to build a dome so that all seasonal programming could happen on the field. To help with the costs, maintenance and sustainability, Kevin proposes that half the field could be used by Regent Park groups and the other half could be rented out. Kevin argues that the city is already looking at building domes on 10 athletic grounds across the city. Although Regent Park is not current considered he feels this is something the community can advocate for. According to Kevin the cost of the dome and its construction would total just over 3 million dollars. Kelvin believes that over 5 - 10 years the community would be in a position to finance the dome. Kevin believes that money can also be raised to support community programming.

A question was raised about female specific programming. Kelvin feels that this could be the role of the community management structure. According to kevin at the moment we don’t know what demographics are missing because we don’t know who is using the field.

In a question related to funding the dome, Kevin responding that once the management is in place he plans to reach out to MLSE, Daniels and others to defray the costs so that the construction won’t take 5 to 10 years.

Lucky Boothe, a manager of City of Toronto Parks, Forestry & Recreation and whose responsibility includes the Regent Park Athletic Grounds was on hand to present the City’s perspective towards issues raised in kevin’s presentation. Contrary to kevin’s belief that the field is only available for Regent Park community use from 4 pm to 8 pm daily, Lucky informed members that the actual use of the field for Regent Park designated groups is from 9 am to 8 pm daily and that external use of the field by outside groups is only from 8 pm to 10 pm. Lucky argues that this was intentional to ensure community access. Much of the programming on the field is run by City staff. Lucky went on to say that the Regent Park Athletic Field is not a full- size field. The field was intentionally designed to prevent competitive games and maintain a community focus and because it is communal, multiple activities take place on the field at the same time. As a result, his staff discourages full team sports (such as 11 on 11 soccer).

Responding to concerns that the use of the field has barriers, Lucky argued that local folks that wish to use the field simply have to walk in to the centre and ask staff. They would be given paperwork indicating their use of the field. In fact, prior to covid, the city held information meetings to inform local groups of the process but unfortunately because of covid these information sessions have not been done in the past two years. During a discussion two youth from Regent Park who is now involved with kevin indicated that they had trouble permitting the field. Lucky offered to meet with them to identify the barriers they had.

Regarding the dome, Lucky went on to say that because it is not a full-size field, he does not know the feasibility of creating a dome because it would just make the field smaller. He encourages that a feasibility study be done.

Despite Lucky’s clarification, in response to questions, Kevin indicated that he is still interested in pursuing a community governance model (for example a not-for-profit group )for managing the field.

Ismail Afrah raised a question to Lucky related to the community building working group desire to develop an advisory related to recreation access. Lucky indicated that in the past that there was a community advisory committee for the former community centre and that he is very much interested in developing an advisory body for all the recreation facilities in Regent Park that can advise the City of Toronto Parks, Forestry and Recreation on how they serve the community.

Celebrating Regent Park and the SDP Progress Report

The final agenda item was presented by Ibrahim Afrah related to the annual SDP Progress Report. According Ibrahim the SDP Progress Report is scheduled for February 8, 2022. Ibrahim presented a proposal to combine the progress report with a celebration that would be held at the Daniels Centre. Members were invited to get involved in the planning of the event.

Police Discussion

The final 15 minutes of that was spent on a discussion of the police incident that occurred on November 25. Most members aired their displeasure over 51 division handling of the incident. In the discussion Deany Peters, Adonis and Marlene describe some of the historical work that the community has done to advocate for better policing in the area. The meeting ended without any concrete proposals or resolutions. This completes the report of the December 7, 2021, meeting of the SDP Stakeholders Table.

Written by
Adonis Huggins

Journalist
FOCUS Media Arts Centre