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Welcome to RPTV Weekly News Show Episode 42. In this weekly news show hosted by RPTV reporters Kedar Ahmed, Fred Alvarado, Jabin Haque, and Victoria Nanneti, we present news that impacts on Toronto's Regent Park and the surrounding areas. Episode 42 features the following stories, which also includes segments from recent, longer programs by Focus Media, (full program times indicated) including: City of Toronto announces the recipients of the 2022 Regent Park SDP Grant and conditionally allocates 2023 funds (01:23 min); A feature "In Memory" of Barbara Helen Castledine (07:15 min); and another "In Memory" of Christian Yombo (09:56 min). Report of Changing Cultures of Regent Park—A multimedia final exhibition (11:15 min); Healing As One Celebrates the FIFA World Cup Final (20:05 min); Advocates call for more access to warming centres (21:40 min); Toronto City Council approves 2023 Housing Action Plan for the 2022-2026 term of  Council (22:46 min); C...

 The Regent Park Neighbourhood Association hosted a meeting for the residents of Regent Park on the 3rd floor of Daniels Spectrum. Regent Park Neighbourhood Association (also known as RPNA) is an association that “seeks to foster an inclusive, diverse, and healthy neighbourhood association in which all residents feel at home.” The purpose of this meeting was to update and engage community members on the Re-zoning application submitted by Tridel and Toronto community housing for the phases 4 and 5 of the Regent Park revitalization. The meeting was centred around the important knowledge of what was happening around the Re-zoning, what were the community benefits related to the project, to urge people to join the Regent Park Community Benefits Coalition, and teach people how to engage and support each other during the critical time for the community. The Phases 4 and 5 of the Regent Park revitalization are bordered by Gerrard Street and Oak Street to the north and south,...

  The Regent Park celebrated the 10th Anniversary of the Daniels Spectrum, the Daniels corporation and its stakeholders. Daniels Spectrum is a community hub in Toronto’s Regent Park neighbourhood. Its is located at 585 Dundas street east. It opened to the public in September 2012. Daniels Spectrum is home to many outstanding arts-based and community-focused organizations that make Daniels Spectrum a special place to work, play, study and get creative. Daniels Spectrum is named in recognition of a bighearted gift from The Daniels Corporation and The John and Myrna Daniels Charitable Foundation. It is a joint venture between Artscape, Toronto Community Housing, The Daniels Corporation and the Regent Park community. Daniels Spectrum is open to the community, and it is made for a variety of cultural uses. Within these walls you’ll find dancing, art-making, singing, music playing, learning, socializing, community building, mentoring, collaborating etc. The Daniels Spectrum is animate...

Femme is a collective of two young women reaching out to other you women to join their community group called “Femme”. They meet up and discuss important events and issues, while doing workshops and cool activities. The goal of the project is to allow culturally diverse young women to create new and memorable experiences, make new friends, gain sisterhood, and build leadership. Located in Regent Park, in the Daniel Spectrum Arts Center. Meetings take place in the third floor community meeting room, every Wednesday from 5:30pm to 7:30pm. The program started in July 2022 and will be completed in April 2023. The experiences gained during the project could have life-long benefits. Offering young people in the community an opportunity to create a youth oriented magazine. Participants would be engaged with photography, print journalism, and magazine design. An honorarium of $300.00 is provided to each participant. Some of the members have claimed the project is both fun and entertain...

The Moss Park Coalition works specifically within the Toronto Downtown East community of Moss Park. The aim of this community-led program is to provide residents and stakeholders in the Moss Park Community with important information on social issues which may impact their daily lives. Currently, the Coalition is working to bring light to the many developments being planned in both the public and private sectors which will bring to change to Toronto’s historic Downtown East. Some of these developments include the Moss Park Subway Station, condo development and changes to green space. The goal of our coalition is to ensure the voices of the community are heard and these voices can help guide developments of their own community to better address the needs of their neighbours.

Formed outside of an emergency meeting held in January 2014 to address extreme weather events such as the July 2013 floods and the December 2013 ice storm. Community Resilience to Extreme Weather (CREW) is a local climate change initiative that was formed by Rita Bijons, an environmental activist, Dave MacLeod, a senior environmental officer, and twenty one community based groups. CREW’s work has proven to be important as they serve low-income individuals in underserved neighbourhoods such as St. Jamestown.  A big part of CREW’s mission is to promote community resilience by fostering communication. In 2016, CREW developed a Neighbours Helping Neighbours program which was composed of twenty two low income seniors of various ethnic backgrounds. These seniors which are known as Extreme Weather Volunteers gathered a toolkit of materials to reach out to their community. In their outreach work, they focused on building supportive social networks and training their neighbours on how to p...

City of Toronto is pleased to announce the recipients of Redefining Regent Park: Youth Leadership Grant. The Redefining Regent Park: Youth Leadership Grant was developed through a private donation by Chris Brillinger, to fund programs in Regent Park. Chriss Brillinger was a former employee of the City of Toronto. City of Toronto Community Funding Unit received 12 applications totalling to $869,986 (Eight hundred-sixty-nine thousand, nine hundred eighty six dollars), in requested investments. The Youth Application Review Committee with the support of City of Toronto staff recommended four projects with funding totalling $250,000. (two hundred fifty thousand dollars). Here is information about each of the projects: 1. Mental Health Matters in partnership with Youth Empowering Parents receives $70,000. Mental Health Matters aims to educate and enhance the mental health and wellbeing of Regent Park youth between the ages of 15-25 by (1) providing a safe space for dialogue, (2) incr...

A new parkette is coming to the River street area. The parkette is expected to open in 2024 as part of a residential development project at 1 Defries Street, located just east of River Street and Shuter Street, between Marks Street and Labatt Avenue. The new parkette at 1 Defries Street will be about the size of a basketball court. A portion of the parkette will be located on the existing Labatt Avenue and will be part of a residential development. The parkette will be accessible and include various amenities and seating areas. A dogs off-leash area will not be included in the design due to the parkette’s limited size. The parkette’s design will evolve through consultation with nearby schools, area residents and the general public in order to design a space that meets the needs of the growing community. If you have ideas for this new, take the online survey to share your thoughts. The design team will use the community feedback to help develop design options for the new parkette. T...

In Regent Park, a community that is in the process of a massive transformation, from Canada's largest social housing complex to a mixed income/mixed use neighbourhood, the outcome of elections, be they Municipal, Provincial, or Federal is of profound interest to area residents. The Community Civic Engagement Collaborative (CCEC) is a grassroots collective of agencies and residents in Regent Park, Moss Park, St. James Town and Corktown neighbourhoods, working to increase civic engagement in elections and beyond, through non-partisan community organizing. On Wednesday May 18, 2022, the CCEC organized and hosted an all-candidates meeting (held at the Daniels Spectrum, 585 Dundas St E, Toronto) and invited candidates to share their respective party's platforms regarding the key issues facing the Toronto Centre riding, which includes Moss Park, Regent Park, Cabbage Town, Church Wellesley Village, and St. Jamestown.  The meeting was moderated by Ina Labuschgne and Walied Khogali. ...

At last weekend Juno Awards 2022, Regent Park community singer-songwriter Mustafa de Poet won the award for alternative album of the year. Mustafa’s 2021 debut album When Smoke Rises is a meditation on the grief he experienced after losing several friends to gun violence.   At the event, Mustafa said backstage. “I am because of Regent Park. I am nothing without my community,” he told media backstage after accepting the award on opening night. “Every experience, every death, every building that was buried, every argument. It shaped me and it shaped the way that I write, and it’s the reason that I write.” At Sunday’s Juno Awards broadcast, he went a step further to bring visibility to Regent Park, pulling up to the red carpet with an entourage of friends from his area, including rapper Lil Berete. Later that evening, for his live rendition of “Stay Alive,” those close confidantes joined Mustafa on stage to sing the final chorus of the song with him, ...

A spotlight on the Regent Park Revitalization, celebrating the successes locally and globally. The arrival on Thursday, April 21st, 2022, of the United Nations World Urban Pavilion in Regent Park, locates the Regent Park Revitalization on a global stage. More than twenty-five years in the making, the transformation from an area known only for being Canada's largest social housing complex, to listing as of “Toronto's Top Neighbourhoods,” (Macleans Magazine) is still another tens from being completed. Nonetheless, the bold experiment of combining social housing with market value housing has for the-most-part paid off. But it is not only this mix of public and private-sector funding that has worked, but it is also the input from residents groups that has had an equally significant impact. In recognition of these successes, the United Nations Habitat and UrbanEconomy Forum have partnered with Daniels Corporation (one of the development partners of Regent Park) and Canada M...

Regent Park Police Officers Mustafa Popalzai and Farzad Ghotbi from 51 Division started Project Hope, an initiative to collect household items, clothing, school supplies and hygiene products to help the new generation of Afghan refugees coming to the GTA as a response to the Canadian government commitment to resettling 40,000 afghan nationals after the Taliban regained control of most of the country with thousands of people desperate to leave Afghanistan back in August 2021. The Neighborhood Community Officers Popalzai and Ghotbi, came to Canada as refugees from Afghanistan and Iran, both know by their personal experiences the challenges that refugees face in their journey of resettling in a big city like Toronto. They started Project Hope last year by attending the hotels where these Afghan refugees were landing in, they approached them to know their needs and make sure they feel welcomed after they suffered tremendous difficult times when they arrived in military planes with ...

OASIS Food Hub is working in St. James Town to address food insecurity When you walk a bit further behind food basics in the space between the little park and 200 Wellesley, you will see the old empty swimming pool. The pool is owned by Toronto Community Housing and was closed in 2010, when it was discovered that black tar was leaking into the pool from a newly installed deck. TCHC assessed that the maintenance required to maintain the old pool would be too much. Once a vibrant social hub in the summer, the fenced in pool has stayed forgotten and waiting to be demolished. That is until now. OASIS Food Hub is a program of the St. James Town Community Co-op, a resident owned and operated organization. OASIS stands for Organic Agro-ecological Sustainable Integrated System. Co-op members and residents developed the OASIS Food Hub model to address food security in St. James Town. Their idea, why not transform the empty pool into an urban organic food farm as a way of addressing food ...

The Regent Park Community Meets to Hear About the Regent Park Redevelopment and the Social Development Plan. On March 23, 2022, the Regent Park Community came together to celebrate the Regent Park Social Development Plan and hear about its activities. The event was held in the Daniels Spectrum Arts Centre located at 585 Dundas Street East. The first part of the event, taking place from noon to 5 pm, featured a market place of community vendors as well as the official launch of the Community Living room hosted by Centre for Social Innovation (CSI). Located on the first floor of Daniels, the Community Living Room is a partnership between CSI, Daniels and Artscape. The space, consisting of tables, lounge chairs, books, children’s toys, a café and a TV, was designed as a public living room for residents and community members to informally gather and use as they see fit. The launch of the space featured a variety of vendors and speeches by Denise Soueidan-O’Leary and Tonya Surman ...

In this video RPTV interviews the leadership of the Regent Park Neighbourhood Association about their involvement in the association. The Regent Park Neighbourhood Association (RPNA) was formed in early 2015, with an aim of having an equal proportion of TCHC and Market residents involved in its membership. RPNA represents residents of Regent Park and provides a broad range of advocacy, services and events. RPNA vision is to foster an inclusive, diverse and healthy neighbourhood in which all residents can feel at home. Recently, in a public announcement made to the community in February 2022, it was announced by members of the leadership team that RPNA had incorporated as a not-for-profit organization and will soon establish an office on the third floor of the Daniels Spectrum Arts Centre. As a not-for-profit organization, RPNA feels that this will give them more access to resources to support membership initiatives and activities. More importantly RPNA feels that resident involvemen...

Regent Park Community groups work make the “Access to Space” project a working reality for area residents. The Regent Park Revitalization has substantially altered the landscape of Regent park with new buildings and amenities, among them the Pam McConnell Aquatic Centre, Daniels Spectrum, the Regent Park Athletic Grounds and the Regent Park Community Centre. The Regent Park Community Centre located at 402 Shuter Street, which is operated by the City of Toronto, is a multi-faceted recreational centre with an employment centre, child care centre, athletic field and connects to Nelson Mandela Park Public School. Additionally, it has an extensive array of arts programs, camps, fitness facilities, sports programs, and the centre has some youth-specific programming. At a recent community meeting held on March 11, 2022, facilitated by representatives from The City of Toronto Recreational Services and members from the Social Development Plan(SDP) working groups, residents a...

Community Organizations and Local City Councillor Call for Action to Acquire Vacant Sherbourne-Dundas Property for Real Affordable Housing. On Monday March 7th, members of local agencies and organizations along with local city councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam gathered outside at 214-230 Sherbourne St. vacant property (just south of Dundas St. East) to intensify their call on the city to acquire the seven-lot parcel, which has sat vacant for more than a decade. They also want the provincial and federal governments to support the City of Toronto by providing funds to purchase this prime development site as well as address Toronto’s housing and homelessness crisis. “Losing this property to developers would be such a huge blow to the community and it would create further gentrification,” said social worker Sheryl Lindsay of Regent Park Community Health Centre’s advocacy committee, which organized Monday’s news conference/rally and has long advocated for the city to expropriate or purchase the...

Regent Park Youth involved in the Climate Conversations radio show, speaks to Michelle Bird, Operations and Project Manager with RESCo Energy In the third episode of Climate Conversations, a show where young people from Regent Park discuss various aspects of environmentalism with experts, organizers, and artists in the field, Jabin Haque and Victoria Nannetti, sit down and have an engaging conversation with Michelle Bird, the Operations Manager and Project Manager with RESCo Energy. They discuss the company’s role in the solar power industry, barriers the industry has faced, who their target audience is, and the upsides and downsides of using solar power in our modern world. In this interview, Michelle Bird describes RESCo Energy as a “one stop shop” for all of your solar energy needs. Created in 2006, RESCo has been providing solar PV services to commercial and industrial customers across Canada, on their website, they describe themselves as “setting the bar for turnkey expert l...

Presenter Joy Henderson, stresses the importance of Allyship as practice to counter the inequities brought on by privilege and power. The Regent Park Neighbourhood Association (RPNA) was formed in early 2015 by an equal parts small group of both Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) resident & Market resident living in Regent Park. The Association looks to represent the interests of all resident of Regent Park by providing a broad range of advocacy services, as well as building community through events and meetings. Mission: “The RPNA seeks to create a safe space where where resident voices are amplified on issues that are important to our neighbourhood & take action.” - RPNA In the first of a series of monthly meetings, the RPNA hosted a virtual community meeting to celebrate Black History month. The featured guest was Joy Henderson, a former Regent Park resident, and Afro-Lakota Child and Youth Care Practitioner/Professor, and writer. Joy Henderson's has...

It wasn’t so long ago that young people growing up in the low-income community of Regent Park, once Canada’s largest community housing complex, would venture outside their community to neighborhoods and the city beyond.  Today, with the popularity and use of cell phones, Regent Park youth have the world at their fingertips.  The advent of modern technology is something that shook the core of the world. It fundamentally changed the way we perceive our own humanity, has changed our habits, exposes us to new worlds, connects us to the larger world, and has completely uprooted the established normality of the upbringing of young people. The current generation of young adults, teenagers, and kids are growing up in a world with resources that would be beyond belief to previous generations of Regent Parkers just a few decades ago.  Because these young people were born into a world where these technological advancements were in the process of being made as they grew up, the...

Agencies serving the Indigenous community in Toronto estimate that there are 70,000 residents living in Toronto. Many indigenous habitants reside in the downtown, low-income neighbourhoods of Regent Park, Moss Park and St. James Town. However, far too often Indigenous residents are invisible and only reflected in issues related to homelessness. In an effort to change this, there is a need for stories that better reflect the diversity of Indigenous communities. In recognition of this fact and in honour of international Women’s Day, we present a conversation with Sandi Bourcher. Sandi Boucher is an Indigenous author, story teller, social activist, and motivational speaker who identifies herself as a Red Thunderbolt woman of the Moon Clan, and a proud member of Seine River First Nation located in Northwestern Ontario. Sandi feels that her role in life is to empower people by renewing their beliefs in themselves and by increasing their awareness of their own capacity and their own ...

Community ambassadors promote Covid-19 Vaccine Awareness With the emergence of the new COVID-19 variant Omicron residents of Regent Park along with community organizations have mobilised to confront the specter of this new challenge. Rallying around getting the word out about where to go and what to do has always been the mainstay of Regent Parkers sense of community – no matter the issue – Regent Park people tend to look out for one another. In this short video, Lamisa Ahmed, a youth ambassador with the Vaccine Engagement Regent Park, and Murshida Samsun Mueen, community ambassador with Regent Park Community Health Centre, join Walied Kjolagli Ali, a community vaccine educator to unpack the plethora of new and old phenomena that now crowd the corona virus landscape. With so much information competing with one’s attention, no one can be faulted for losing sight of even the most fundamental concerns, and so it is no surprise that Walied asked Lamisa to once more remind people...

Regent Park Youth Video-Podcast, Climate Conversations, speaks to Assistant Professor Rochman of the U of T Trash Team Our new youth video-podcast, Climate Conversations (CC), led by Jabin Hauqe, Victoria Nanneti and Harris Ali, focuses on learning about and discussing climate change, environmental consciousness and issues. In this very first episode of CC, the Regent Park youth hosts spoke to Chelsea Rochman, Assistant Professor and researcher at the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department at U of T, as well as the Co-founder and Program Lead for the U of T Trash Team. Rochman spoke to Jabin, Victoria and Harris about the Trash Team initiative, waste management/research and waste literacy. Getting us thinking about small changes that urban communities like Regent Park can implement in our daily lives, to have an impact on reducing plastic pollution. The U of T Trash Team is a 5 year old organization of students, early career researchers, U of T staff and volunteers whose goal is t...

TCHC launches the 2022 scholarship program for TCHC youth residents ​​​​​​​​​​​​The Investing in Our Diversity Scholarship Program recognizes the commitment of young people involved in anti-racism, diversity initiatives, and in building safe and healthy communities such as Regent Park and the surrounding areas. Between the cost of tuition, books, food, and transportation, it can be tough for many students to find the money to cover the cost of postsecondary school. Regent Park youth can apply today for the Investing in Our Diversity Scholarship. A scholarship recipient can receive:  Up to a $4,000 scholarship award towards tuition fees for the first year of postsecondary education or training (college, university, trade school, or apprenticeship).  Opportunity for second-year scholarships of up to $4,000 to be applied directly to tuition fees, if you attend one of the following institutions: Ryerson University, University of Toronto, York University, Humber College, George ...

Miguel is a long-time resident of Regent Park area. He is also a member of the Regent Park Neighborhood Association, the Coalition for Community Benefits, and the Tenant Representative for 220 Oak St, a Toronto Community Housing building. Miguel is also an Indigenous man originally from Peru. Miguel’s activism is born from his personal lived experience as an indigenous person, and as someone who is living with physical and mental issues. In his own words, Miguel has said, “my life long project.. is to leave a better society, a better place for everyone, and a living legacy.” In May of 2021, with the discovery of residential school burial grounds of indigenous children, Canadian society was rudely awakened to a history that had remained hidden, forgotten and set aside… a history of oppression, and some say genocide. “The remains of 215 children, some as young as 3 years old, have been found buried on the site of what was once Canada's largest Indigenous residential school —...