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Young violent offenders in Toronto have an alternative to jail: meeting the victims of their crimes.
The PACT Urban Peace Program, launched by Toronto-area Rotarians Dan Cornacchia and David Lockett in 2000, brings the teenagers, their victims, and local residents together to talk about the crimes and craft restitution plans. The program is modelled on a conflict-resolution technique used in Australian Aboriginal communities.
“Violence is a learned behaviour,” Cornacchia says. “By helping children today, we can stop the cycle of violence.”
Founding members of the Rotary Club of Parkdale-High Park, Cornacchia and Lockett opened the Redwood, a shelter for abused women and children, in 1993. That work inspired them to tackle the growing problem of urban violence. PACT (Participation, Acknowledgement, Commitment, and Transformation) helps more than 500 teens a year. Along with the mediation program, it offers vocational training and life coaching for teens who have been charged under the Youth Criminal Justice Act as well as for at-risk youth, such as those living in homeless shelters.

Learning by doing

There is also an economic benefit to PACT, run by volunteers and funded by more than 15 Rotary clubs. “Fifteen per cent of youth offenders will cost society $3 million each” during their lifetimes, Lockett observes.
PACT has facilitated over 2,000 meetings between victims and offenders. The restitution plans developed at the sessions often include monetary compensation, letters to the victims, and community service.
The teens can fulfill community service requirements, whether handed down by a judge or recommended at a meeting, through PACT’s eight LifeSkills programs, in areas such as film production, urban reforestation, and construction. Toronto high schools are adopting Grow to Learn, an offshoot of the LifeSkills urban agriculture program. The students plant and tend a vegetable garden, then donate their harvest to local food banks.
Many young offenders lose interest in traditional academic instruction, Lockett says, but PACT allows kids to learn by doing. Business owners and other local residents help run the LifeSkills programs. Some are former youth offenders, such as Paul Davis, director of the film program.
Many of the graduates have found jobs and enrolled in college courses related to the LifeSkills program areas, including ecology and communications. “Success is about achieving the goals established by each youth,” says Terance Brouse, PACT’s communications director.

Clubs can make a difference

To guide the teens, PACT also offers LifePlan Coaching, which provides one-on-one counselling and mentoring. Craig Trowhill coaches Akeem Stephenson, a former youth offender who was living in a homeless shelter when a judge referred him to PACT. At a meeting, Trowhill reminds Stephenson why he has been successful in the program: “The process was the tool, but it was all you. It was all because of the choices you have made.”
Stephenson is now supporting himself and pursuing a career in the music industry as a producer and rap artist. “PACT’s coaching program gave me a lot of options to see where I went wrong and what I could have done to change certain situations,” he tells Trowhill. “I now have a deeper perspective on life and the confidence to reach the big goals I set for myself. The sky’s the limit.”
“Rotary clubs can make a remarkable difference in their own communities by solving this problem of urban violence,” Lockett says. When he speaks at club meetings to encourage support for PACT, he tells Rotarians: “It’s a game of inches, but inches add up. The journey for these teenagers starts with the choice to participate and the acknowledgement that they need to be responsible for their behaviour.”