Youth centre provides outreach peer support

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Moricetown Place Society (MPS), a youth outreach centre in providing peer counselling and health education, is run by youth. The centre also offers training in public speaking and Web design.

Executive Director Andrew Tom is a 19-year-old Grade 12 student from Wetsuweten First Nation who devotes much of his time to raising awareness on issues such as youth suicide.

"Suicide is definitely a big concern to not only Moricetown Place Society, but to the whole community. There isn't enough being done to prevent or even treat those who are suicidal," said Tom.

Because access to counselling is one way to help prevent suicide, Tom said that it is important that young people know where to turn for help.

"I'm offering peer counseling to youth who are suicidal with the help and assistance of other, more educated counsellors. Our centre aids those high-risk youth by acting as a referral agency in the sense that we refer troubled teens to those we trust can help."

Tom added, "If there are opportunities out there that can better train the staff at MPS in the field of suicide, then I would definitely encourage our volunteers to take up those opportunities; especially since this issue is of great danger to young people across they country."

Tom is also a member of the Provincial Aboriginal Youth Council (PAYC). This summer, he and his fellow PAYC representatives are planning to walk across Canada in an effort to highlight the problem of youth suicide.

"I think it helps a lot because any kind of walks or charities, kinds of things like that, it opens up the eyes of the community because the people that are often doing the work and bringing the awareness, they're the ones that have stories to tell. And whether it's stories from their personal background or stories that they are allowed to share from other clients, those stories are often quite sad and really wakes everyone up, like wow, this is going on. So I do know for a fact that it's effective," said Tom.

Suicide awareness is not the only thing on Tom's agenda. From March 6 to 14, he attended a series of meetings that addressed the issue of Aboriginal youth employment. Not only did he voice the need for more training at the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) Regional Youth Forum, he also met with Premier Gordon Campbell, Minister of Community, Aboriginal and Women's Services Murray Coell, and executives from the British Columbia Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres (BCAAFC) on a separate occasion to discuss this matter.

"There was so many statistics that we were able to touch base on, they're not totally up to date; they're from 2001. But we've gathered over 50 per cent of the Aboriginal population is under the age of 25 and there's a lot of people that are leaving the reservation to enter an urban area. We stressed to them that all these people that are leaving their rez to go down to urban areas to find work are often trying to find work blindly. By that we mean they're going to the workforce without any skills or without any work experience or even a basic knowledge of how to write a resume. So this year, the government was interested in assisting in our efforts if it had anything to do with training and with experience for Aboriginal people," said Tom, who plans to pursue a career in politics.

Tom believes that Aboriginal youth need to take a more proactive approach in tackling issues affecting their communities.

"I'd like to see First Nations people go into more of a state of mind where, okay this is the youth, we're bringing them to the table and they're going to participate fully in our meetings. Because you know, it's not about just being a good role model, it's about taking action now."