I think one of the things that was really successful with the Youth Challenge Fund model—a designated fund—was that all of the staff who worked at the fund and the entirety of their roles were focused on building relationships with grassroots organizations, youth-led organizations and young people on the ground.
As for the intermediary organizations that we have now, like Tropicana, Tropicana is in and of itself a charity. It runs programs in Scarborough for young people, safe spaces, after-school programs and so on. Because of this SCPI program, it has taken on the role of being a funder, but that is not it's functional purpose or history. The staffing model that they have isn't actually conducive to being a funder because, for the past 30 years, they have been a charitable organization.
One of the other initiatives that I know the federal government is working on is an endowment, setting up a Black foundation. I would really encourage the government to accelerate and ensure that they are working on that. If you have an organization that is dedicated to distributing funding to these organizations, to building capacity, to supporting organizations over the long term, then you are going to have staff who can do that work on the ground, who can build relationships, who can go out and host focus groups, who can meet organizations in their communities.
We did have one of the representatives from the Africa Centre come over here. They are in Edmonton. They came to Toronto to meet some of the organizations on the ground. They had to hire all new staff. It was a very quick process for them. They didn't really have the infrastructure to be able to do that necessary outreach to ensure that they are reaching more rural communities, more emergent groups.
I think ensuring that there is either adequate staffing at the intermediary organization that's chosen so that they can do outreach.... I know from working at the Youth Challenge Fund that we worked a lot of nights. We went out into communities late at night. We were in Scarborough. We were at Jane and Finch. We were hanging out at the community centre to let young people know that this grant was available to them, to socialize and think about what ideas they would want to bring to life and what they would want to see in their community.
You need to be there on the ground. These are not communities that have strong relationships or ties to government. We really need a staffing model and a funding model. II would suggest that the preference is to have a Black community foundation that can be there for the long term and can actually focus on just building capacity and building relationships instead of trying to be a charity and a fund