Cape Breton coalition hopes to help youth in need

A Cape Breton coalition is being reformed to assist youth groups across the island.

The Coalition of Organizations Supporting Youth was originally created shortly after the 2012 Cape Breton Regional Municipality election, but it didn't survive long.

Now the coalition has been reformed by the newly formed municipal government to address the problems youth groups are facing.

Wayne McKay, a volunteer chair of the coalition, said they hope all the organizations in the coalition will be able to come together to help further the goal of all the groups involved.

"They're doing a lot of the hard front-line work, keeping kids fed, housed, and providing recreation opportunities," said McKay. "Basically, the way we see it is they're saving lives and changing the potential path for some of these children and youth."

The child poverty rate is about 35 per cent in Cape Breton, according to a report issued in December by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

The organizations involved in the coalition cover many different youth groups, including the Whitney Pier Youth Centre, the LOVE group out of Membertou, The Cape Breton Centre for Sexual Health, Youth Project and Adult Learning Association of Cape Breton.

The original coalition didn't last long and disbanded because the municipal government at the time changed directions and invested in the federal government RELAY's program.

McKay said the RELAY program was supposed to trickle money down to the youth groups but they didn't end up getting what they needed.

He said the goal of the new coalition is to create a strategic plan between the 11 groups to secure municipal funding to be spread out among them.

"What they need is more support for staffing and operational costs," said McKay. "They have issues with staff who are chronically underpaid, they have high staff turnover and they're losing good people."

Madonna Doucette is Cape Breton education co-ordinator with the Youth Project, a non-profit dedicated to providing support and services to young people around issues of sexual orientation and gender identity.

She said being sustainable is an outcome she hopes to achieve with this coalition. "We don't want to feel like we have to compete for any of the funding and we also feel that we are plugging a lot of holes that are out there," said Doucette.