Community Connex with True Daley: Bridging the Gap
True Daley
By True Daley
In the best-selling book ‘The Tipping Point’, author Malcolm Gladwell, introduces readers to influential people known as ‘connectors’. They are individuals who ‘link us up with the world, and have a special gift for bringing the world together’.
Although Zola Jeffers has lived in a stable two-parent family in a middle-class suburb for most of her life, it seems she’s been destined to bridge the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Like most teens, she says there were a few bumps in the road, before she figured out her true calling.
“It was so funny, because we had a career day at our high school and different people from different professions came in to speak to us. At the time, I thought I wanted to be a social worker, so this lady came in to speak about it, but she was so miserable. It was the worst presentation I’ve ever seen in my life. She focused on all the negative parts of the job. What she said was true. Everybody dumps their problems on you. You take things home, and it’s stressful. It’s always an emergency. But those were the most the poignant parts for her. Everything was negative. I decided I didn’t want to be a social worker anymore. The lady just totally turned me off. Since I wasn’t good at math, or the arts, I needed to find something to do. It was a process of elimination.”
Serving others comes naturally to Jeffers, whose mother has been a Community Worker for the past 20 years. From the ages of 10-15, she attended a day camp in Regent Park. Her mother worked in the area providing employment skills to single mothers wishing to reintegrate into society. By the age of 17, she was running a female-specific HIV Prevention program at the camp, which promoted all aspects of healthy living.
Jeffers says her mother’s passion and natural ability to care for others outside of her family, inspired her to do the same. Despite her initial negative introduction to social work, she eventually gained the support needed to move forward.
“It sounds corny, but it just fell into place. Young kids don’t give up their time freely.
I was doing my 40 hours way before you had to do your 40 hours to complete high school. I was volunteering at shelters, not getting paid, and still not knowing what I wanted to do with my life. I’m looking at it now, and I realize this is the reason I was doing all these things. No one asked me to do it. I didn’t know that was exactly what I needed to do to get to this point. I was just lucky at the time because I had amazing mentors. I saw them having fun with young people, so I was like, “This is great, their job looks easy”. It worked out for me. I understand where our youth are, when they have absolutely no idea what’s going on, who to connect with, or how to get to where they want to be.”
The understanding gained from her life experiences, has lead her to her current position.
Zola Jeffers
Jeffers is the Team Lead of a landmark three-year gang intervention program, Prevention Intervention Toronto. Run in partnership with the City of Toronto, P.I.T. launched in 2009, with the aim to provide round-the-clock support, to at-risk youth through personal mentorship, programming, and services. The year round program runs in nine-month intervals, serving 13 – 24 year-olds.
P.I.T. is situated in three of Toronto’s priority neighbourhoods, Jane & Finch, Rexdale, and Weston-Mount Dennis, where Jeffers has recently been relocated.
Prior to working with JVS, Jeffers worked in the alternative school system, assisting students with employment, housing, and personal needs. Despite the gaps in the education system, Jeffers acknowledges the positive efforts made by the TDSB to recognize some of the reasons why students in high-needs communities were falling behind.
“The school and Patrick Knight created this position because they understood that a kid with no food on their table does not care about trigonometry. That was a nice balance in bringing in a Community Worker and having a Child and Youth Worker.
They understood that kids couldn’t concentrate if other pressing issues were at the forefront of their minds.”
She says many students were failing in school, due to disinterested parents.
“I can’t tell you how many parents missed PTA meetings. No matter what time we scheduled them. We tried mornings, evenings, weekends. Parents would not come!
It broke my heart. We didn’t even have bad things to say about the kids, there were many of them that we had so much good things to say, and their parents did not show any support. It was frustrating because we wanted to validate the students to the people they spent the most amount of time with, and they were uninvolved. I have to hold black parents accountable for that, because that was one of the most maddening things in working there.”
The opportunity gave Jeffers an inside look at the personal issues troubled black youth had been facing since they were children. Having access to Ontario Student Records helped her to connect the dots when assessing long-term behavioural issues. Some of which, went unaddressed for years.
“There was one kid, who had to write a story in grade 5. His story had pure F bombs, and described how he wanted to murder somebody. The teacher took that, photocopied it and put it inside the OSR. No 5th grader should be talking like that, but no one took the time to find out what was going on.”
Serving teens and young adults in conflict with the law, has motivated Jeffers to pursue her career goals further. She says while her current position as a front-line worker is rewarding, she remains focused on a future where she can affect change through social policy.
“People have humbly shared their stories with me, and I want to be able to go to those places, those boardrooms, wherever it is, where people don’t really know what’s going on at the front-lines, to impart some knowledge, and have the clout to do so. I want to ensure that I’m in a place where I can speak – not for the voiceless – but for the people who have been silenced by those in power.”
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