Community safety projects honoured at the Mayor’s Community Safety Awards

Mayor Olivia Chow joined community members and Inspector Roger Caracciolo from the Toronto Police Service (TPS) to celebrate the efforts of nine local community safety and well-being projects at the Mayor’s Community Safety Awards ceremony at Toronto City Hall.

Developed by the City of Toronto’s Task Force on Community Safety, and first presented in 2002, the Mayor’s Community Safety Awards celebrate innovative projects that help build safe communities, in partnership with the TPS.

Three community-led and three youth-led projects were presented with awards and three projects received honorary mentions during the ceremony.

A new category was added this year to recognize seniors-led groups that help build safe communities and acknowledge their contributions to the reduction of violence or the experience of seniors who experience violence in Toronto.

The Community Safety Award winners are:

• BAM Collective – #LetsEmpowerToronto is a community-driven response to gun violence in downtown neighborhoods. This project integrates mental health workshops, art therapy and job opportunities to empower youth and foster safer environments.
• Smile for Sache – This organization’s mission of community-driven proactivity and positivity began following the tragic loss of Abdulaziz Mohamed Dubet to gun violence in Toronto.
• WST Foundation Wellness – Formed and driven by racialized women coming together as a peer support network to empower minority and marginalized families in Etobicoke.
• Engaged Communities – Stars in the Night helps create a safer community by addressing factors contributing to violence. Youth designers with lived experience act as paid volunteers and have an opportunity to contribute positively.
• Friends from the Endz – This production house/multimedia collective highlights stories from Toronto’s most resilient neighbourhoods. The group collaborates with the city’s vulnerable youth to secure a platform for their stories.
• YAAACE (Youth Association for Academics, Athletics, and Character Education) – This Black-led, Black-focused and Black-serving organization was founded in 2007 and offers strength-based programs and services to mitigate the systemic barriers and lack of equitable opportunities that racialized members of the Humber River-Black Creek community face. Its work emphasizes providing access to structured programming in education, family supports, expanded opportunities and athletics, employment, and violence prevention and intervention.

Three honourable mentions were also awarded:

• Silent Tears community space – community category
• KDE mental health workshops – youth category
• Oakwood Vaughan Oasis for Healthy Aging – senior category

Award recipients received a commemorative certificate and a $1,500 award to support their innovative approaches to addressing safety within their local communities.

Engaging residents, building community capacity to lead and strengthening collaboration are all goals of SafeTO, the City’s Community Safety & Well-Being Plan:

More information about the Awards including a list of winners is available on the City’s website:

Quote:

“My congratulations to the recipients of this year’s Community Safety Awards. The work they do to give young people hope is critical to making our city safer for all. Toronto is a city of neighbourhoods, and we want all communities to feel safe, and we couldn’t do it without our community partners.”

– Mayor Olivia Chow

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