Success Stories

Street Youth Online-Rideau Street Youth Enterprises

Rideau Street Kids Go Online

The soft pastel graphics and gentle invitation to disclose what mood you’re in today belie the harsh realities behind the Rideau Street Youth Enterprises (RSYE) web site that is part of Industry Canada’s SchoolNet Digital Collections project.

The project was carried out under contract to Industry Canada’s SchoolNet Digital Collections program, which gives people 15 to 30 years of age entrepreneurial and technology-based job experience converting collections of Canadian material into digital form for display on SchoolNet. The SchoolNet Digital Collections web site has grown to become possibly the largest single source of Canadian content on the Information Highway.

This site is by and about Ottawa’s street youth. Unique among more than 100 sites on this eclectic virtual museum of Canadian culture, it’s the only one that’s actually about the people who researched, developed, digitized and programmed it.

The RSYE web site profiles what life is like for Ottawa street youth. It includes information on havens and hostels, articles from youth newspapers, and photographs and images that speak louder than words. A section of poetry called Concrete Thoughts is equally revealing. An anonymous young poet writes,

"Will I Be Safe To Go Home? I know I have to leave again, I can feel my mother's grief as she tries to mend our family together as one..."

RSYE web site project leader Peter Wilson is an educator and specialist in "hard-to-service" students with the Ottawa Board of Education. He teaches people who are learning English as a second language, students with learning disabilities and language disorders, and latterly, four Ottawa-area street youth how to access new technologies despite the challenges that face them.

Wilson explains that young people who end up on the street usually do so not because one catalytic event propels them there, but because many problems build up and culminate in a need to escape anywhere to get away from a life that’s become intolerable.

His challenge as an educator was to recognize the problems these four young people face, and help them develop some tools to solve them. SchoolNet Digital Collections offered them an opportunity to learn about technology in a job environment and at the same time contribute a touching and gutsy commentary on their own lives and experiences to the Information Highway. It was part of the process of getting them off the street.

Wilson said that his tactic in helping the four young people develop the web site was to give them complete autonomy over the actual content. "I decided to let them start from where they came from and build on that," he said. At the same time, he had to supervise strictly such matters as work ethics, who did what, and deadlines. "To have success with these students, you have to have clearly defined expectations and boundaries," he explained. "They simply cannot cope with more failure in their lives, so if the project’s to be any use at all, you have to make sure they can succeed." Wilson is proud of his team’s progress and the hidden talents the project disclosed. Waine Wing, who contributed the sensitive pastel colours and gentle cartoon-style humour to the site, is a truly gifted graphic artist. James Brunet showed special abilities in conveying the underlying distress of street youth through his careful editing of video footage to produce revealing still photographs. Jason Mole and Mitch Trudel were the true computer whiz kids of the project, specializing in programming and digitizing images, and learning how to surf their way through the intricacies of the Net.