Simulation of street life rough
Banks check cheques, something Colin Smith, a 16-year-old participant in the Salvation Armys teen survival challenge learned the hard way and went to jail for. Smith, a Churchill high school student, is one of 77 young people taking part in the 24-hour challenge at Current River Park. The event, which puts the students through a simulation of life on the streets, wraps up this morning at 10 a.m.
Hed gone to the bank a tent to cash his pay cheque, all $7 of it, but added the numeral one in front of the seven, and wrote teen on the end of seven, making it look like he was due $17. The bank teller, an event volunteer, verified the cheque by confirming with someone else whether Smith had done that much work, which I didnt realize, said Smith. His punishment was 20 minutes in the games jail, where new inmates put an ink thumbprint on their file.
Just five hours into the game Saturday and the jail file was getting thick.
But after this morning, these criminal records will vanish, as will the mock jail, shelter, thrift store and welfare office. The survival challenge is one of the Salvation Armys annual fundraisers, and each student must raise at least $100 to participate. They each get a scenario of why theyre homeless teen runaway, drug addict, pregnant mother along with varying amounts of money and pieces of identification.
The students spent the early part of Saturday doing odd jobs to earn money for food and shelter, going between offices to get identification and Ontario Works and constructing their homes for the night out of cardboard, tarps and pallets. Despite spending a night outside in those make-shift shelters, many teens come back year after year to participate.
Smith is back for his third year. Its a great way to get volunteer hours and meet people, he said, sitting in a tarp and pallet lean-to, next to the jail hed earlier vacated, with Taylor Ferrence and Joel Meehan, students at other schools he met at the survival challenge last year. The biggest surprise for all three was just how hard dealing with the paperwork of life getting identification is when youre on the street and have no money.
In his scenario this year, Meehan was a teenager whod left home and his drug-addicted, abusive father. Still attending school and working part-time, he cant make enough for a place to stay. I always told my mom I was going to leave home, said Meehan, 15, about his own life. Afterward, I thought about it. Why would I want to do all this and live on the street?
Jody Tauro, a child and youth counsellor with Childrens Centre Thunder Bay, was the games police officer Saturday afternoon. This is my line of work anyway, he said, referring to kids who struggle. As Const. Smith, he hauled miscreants off to jail and handed out random survival cards, similar to chance cards in Monopoly. Some might mean a windfall for a lucky participant, others could tell a youth theyve just been hit by a car.
Though its a 24-hour adventure with a hot shower at the end, Tauro said he thinks the kids learn something, and its a way to see a world they wouldnt normally. Some of these teens will go on to volunteer or get into social work, he said, pausing to read a young mans sign, advertising lessons on how to say Hi, how are you? in five languages for a buck.
After the teen rattles off the phrase in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Finnish and German, Tauro digs into his pocket for one of the painted poker tokens that pass as currency here. He flips the teen another when he hears the Italian version.
Earlier, said Salvation Army spokeswoman Gail Kromm, a group of girls did a song and dance routine as a way to raise a few dollars. One young fellow was selling hugs for a token, she said, noting he made a few bucks that way.
Sarah Elizabeth Brown
7 June 2009
