Miriam: Tell me about the word youth. What does it means to you with respect to this program?

Christina:

What does it mean to me? It doesn’t really mean much to me - to be honest. It’s just that it’s the politically correct way that we say younger people, but it's funny because I'm technically a youth, right? I’m, oh no! Maybe not anymore, I’m now 26, but I guess I still, when I worked at Head & Hands, I definitely qualified as a youth. I was in that age group, I guess, but at the same time, I’m working as a professional, but also the idea of professionalism too in relation to youth, but yeah, I guess, for me, in my head, it’s more high school students or people who are under 18. How I see it? Yeah like at Head & Hands, we try not to use the term children or kids, like we make a distinction between children and youth, like children are in elementary school because that term is also used to like make an individual seem very innocent they'll say child. It’s just a child - you can’t teach them about sex, they’re too young, and anyway, so it's…

Miriam: But do you think youth has similar kind of connotations, but maybe not the same as child ?

Christina Foisy:

Yeah, for sure it does, it does, but there’s also an element of rebellion, and we need to police them, we need to make sure that they’re not on the street, in gangs, and stuff. There’s definitely that stigma as well, but it’s kind of like the word empowerment, like what does it really mean, like it’s kind of just a buzz word. We want to fund youth-based projects, youth-friendly language, how it kind of englobes the diversity of these people. They don’t all fit in the same category. They’re not all suffering the same dilemmas or challenges in their lives. They’re just as complex as adults, if not more so, and yeah, it’s a weird thing. I don’t know.