Challenges facing refugees push some kids into gangs, former gang member and refugee says
Isolation and language barriers make life hard for newcomer kids, former gang member and refugee says
When Mandela Kuet was 17, he stood on Spence Street and pointed to the University of Winnipeg buildings. He was going to be a student there one day, he told his friends.
"You'll never go there. You're from the hood," Kuet remembers them replying.
The South Sudan refugee and his friends lived in a community of refugees and immigrants in Winnipeg's inner city. This is where most of Winnipeg's conflict-escaping newcomers settle, according to Kuet.
Fifty-one per cent of residents in Central Park are immigrants, according to the 2011 census.
The area is also home to street gangs comprised of immigrant and refugee youth. Some of Kuet's friends were in the gangs, but he managed to stay out, at first, by finding a sense of belonging elsewhere.
Isolation, academic struggles
Kuet succeeded in school. He was on pace to graduate early and his basketball talent drew scouts from across North America to his Sisler High School gym.
A lot of refugee youth don't experience the same kind of educational success, which leads to isolation and eventually gang membership, according to Kuet.
Kuet now mentors immigrant and refugee youth. He says problems begin when the kids who don't speak English enter English-speaking classrooms. Some school-aged children never had the opportunity to attend school before getting placed among Canadian students who've passed every grade since kindergarten.
Some refugee children fall behind, some get bullied and some feel teachers don't care about their struggles, he said.
"If you don't like school, you're going to do everything you can to not be there," said Kuet.
And they're not going to hang out with adults, he said.
The kids could go home and talk to their parents about school, but for some, their cultural norms prevent them from opening up about their struggles, he said.
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Money and a chance to belong
Isolated from school and their families, they find a sense of belonging in gangs, said Kuet. Gangs also offer them money — something refugee and immigrant kids may be more inclined to look for.
Newcomers' parents often can't do the jobs they did at home—either their credentials aren't recognized or they don't have the certifications Canadian workplaces require, said Kuet.
His parents, who worked as a lawyer and schoolteacher in their home country, couldn't work in those capacities in Canada.
They took jobs at Palliser Furniture, but got laid off when Kuet was a teen. They could no longer afford Kuet's membership to the YMCA — the place he spent most of his waking hours outside of school. His friends there acted as mentors to him, but now he was cut off from them and from a place to go after school.
Family issues arose at home, and he joined a gang he had tried hard to stay out of. He racked up criminal charges for possession of a weapon and faced deportation back to South Sudan.
But Kuet left the gang and went back to school.
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Programs growing
Today, Kuet works in programs at the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization of Manitoba (IRCOM) that help young people stay out of gangs. IRCOM liaisons communicate with schools to ensure refugee children are learning and engaged. IRCOM's after-school programs give youth a place to go.
In light of the Syrian refugee crisis, the province announced in January it would spend $1.6 million on education for refugee youth. The money is to help refugee children settle in, to increase English as a second language courses and also to support grants for kids from war-torn areas.
Kuet feels the kids now have a greater chance for success due to these programs that weren't around when he was a teen.
But gangs still actively recruit refugee and immigrant youth because they can offer them something newcomer conditions can't — a sense of belonging.
This is one in a series of stories written for CBC Manitoba by Red River College journalism students that looks at ways conflict abroad has shaped Winnipeg.
Here are other stories in the series: