Articles for the Topic "Social Enterprise"

Feasibility Study of the Social Enterprise Intervention with Homeless Youth - Homeless Hub Research Summary Series

2011-05-30T03:07:09

Homeless youth often engage in high-risk survival behaviours such as prostitution, theft and drug dealing to meet their basic needs. They often have histories of depression, low self-esteem, trauma, self-harm, substance abuse, and physical and sexual abuse. However, due to inadequate and non-existing treatment options directed at homeless youth, they tend to have limited service utilization. Low service utilization combined with high-risk behaviours puts homeless youth at risk of developing new mental illnesses, as well as chronic homelessness and social exclusion.

I Helped Build That: a Demonstration Employment Training Program for Homeless Youth in Toronto, Canada

2009-02-17T01:57:41

In this case study, Bridgman presents preliminary findings on the development of Eva's Phoenix--a pilot project designed to provide housing and employment-training opportunities for homeless youth in Toronto, Canada. Bridgman focuses on the construction-training program for youth and explores some of the tensions that can arise in a project of this nature.

Left 'Out in the Cold': the 'Socially-Excluded' Homeless in Canada

2009-02-17T01:57:41

seems self-evident to assert that the Homeless represent a "socially-excluded" group in Canadian society, however, an examination of the relevant literature suggests that housing status is an all too frequently neglected concept. This presentation will examine homelessness in relation to social exclusion. Social exclusion discourse, relatively new in Europe, and barely audible in Canada, has come to rely on the importance of labour market participation; adopting the mantra that 'integration' into the market equals 'inclusion' in society. This presentation will argue that housing status is a critical element absent from the discourse. Few have addressed that those living without shelter and in precarious shelter existences (this definition of homelessness will be used here) are 'socially excluded'. Current debates in social exclusion focus on those deemed 'unproductive', i.e. unemployed, while they fail to mention that those living without adequate housing should be equally considered. It is a ripe time for housing status to be made one of the central tenets of social exclusion, as many European Union agencies use the term widely and are searching for measurement tools and analysis to define it. Social exclusion has the potential to reach beyond the hegemony of a labour market analysis. It also has the ability to reflect relational aspects of exclusion, freeing the processes of marginalisation from the distributional mud of poverty. However, one of the necessary ingredients of inclusion has been forgotten. Housing is a central piece in weaving the social fabric. Social exclusion must unearth the processes that lead to a lack of adequate housing, and the necessary disenfranchisement that this creates. The current focus of exclusion on consumption and production provides the economic reflection in relation to employment, but fails to capture more complex social processes leading to isolation and marginalisation. It negates the challenges homeless people face in exercising their citizenship rights and in gaining social legitimacy. [abstract]

Making Money-Exploring the Economy of Young Homeless Workers

2009-02-17T01:57:41

Three hundred and sixty homeless youth in Toronto, Canada were asked to report how they made money in order to survive. Income generation among this marginal population was conceptualized by fusing theory and research in the fields of the informal economy and the "underclass" and sociological criminology. While economic activity was found to be flexible, our analysis also reveals that work on the street is stratified on the basis of worker backgrounds and job/situational conditions. In terms of policy, our key them in this paper is that successful strategies to move young people off the streets cannot rest simply on low paying employment as a solution.