Michelle Raso tries to steer Centretown youth in the right direction, writes Carolyn Shimmin.
The Door Youth Centre is a complete mess. Torn carpets lie on the floor. Some of the rooms are being painted. The former “break dancing room” now holds furniture stacked on top of each other. To Michelle Raso, it’s a vision.
“We want to make better use of the physical space,” says Raso. “We’re moving rooms and expanding. We have a job board; we never had this stuff before.”
Raso is the executive director of The Door, a teen drop-in on Somerset Street. It was her idea to renovate, but staff and teenagers don’t seem to mind the disorder.
Raso, 32, is a petite woman with long brown hair. Her office is tiny and sparse with grey walls, a desk and two chairs. She sits in front of her computer with a cup of coffee.
Raso grew up in Guelph and attended the University of Ottawa in 1988. She said she studied criminology and sociology because she wanted to go into law enforcement. By her third year, she said, she was more interested in crime prevention.
“I believe in ways to positively affect society, and working in crime prevention is a positive way,” says Raso. “I knew I didn’t want to work in reactive ways and I knew I just didn’t want to be involved in a career that made me carry around a weapon. It just wasn’t my thing.”
Raso says it’s hard to measure results when you’re reaching kids before they commit crimes. But, she explains, by giving support to parents and youth she can protect the community as the kid comes of age.
When she graduated in 1992, Raso says, the recession made it difficult for people wanting to do social work in community-based projects.
“When you work for something grassroots, contracts are not stable,” says Raso. She says that she has never had full-time work, and normally has to work two jobs to make a living. She jokes that maybe she would have had better luck if she had become a police officer. Instead, after Raso graduated she volunteered for the life skills and child outreach programs at the Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa while working in several different restaurants to make ends meet. She also volunteered at the Glebe Community Centre.
Raso was hired as a part-time outreach coordinator at The Door in 1996. She worked 10 to 15 hours a week. At that time, she says, they had problems with older youth, ages 18 to 20, starting fights in the centre. It frightened the younger teenagers so they wouldn’t return
Raso says the older kids coming into the centre were more likely to commit crime.
“They were 18, 19, 20 years old, but emotionally they weren’t there. It took a lot of the staff’s energy.” Raso says that nowadays the kids are less likely to commit a crime and there are usually around 15 to 25 teenagers in the centre at any given time.
Raso left The Door in 1998 to take a few computer courses and returned last spring as the executive director.
“I want to provide a safe place for kids to come and have fun, but at the same time be educated,” says Raso. “It’s a preventative measure that provides a solution.”
“We do have the odd kid that is in trouble,” says Raso. She says staff members know each teenager’s history so they can provide appropriate support.
Raso says the centre’s current problem is gambling. The rooms are being changed around so that staff can keep an eye on the kids without making them feel as though they’re constantly being watched.
She says behaviour like gambling isn’t tolerated and she hopes to bring in a speaker from the YMCA’s anti-gambling group. She says The Door had a guest speaker to talk to the kids about drugs and dispel some of the myths they hold, but she knows a few kids smoke marijuana.
“The original concepts for the centre when it opened in 1993 was to support youth in all their developmental growth; emotional, physical, educational and vocational,” says Raso. “But in the past what we did was focus or concentrate on just one of the elements.”
Raso says she is trying to incorporate all the elements. There is now one room with a comfy couch for kids to ponder educational resources, such as job training, apprenticeships and college applications. Another room has health information about everything from STDs to nutrition. In the last five months a job board has been created to help kids search for meaningful employment. There’s also a room with seven computers so teenagers can do their homework.
“She’s very ambitious, very much a go-getter,” says Cindy Dickinson, program manager of The Door.
Dickinson has known Raso for four years. She says Raso has been good for the centre.
“She’s one of those people that is not afraid to ask for something. She gets things done.”
With four part-time staff and a few volunteers, the centre provides youth mentoring, networking, conflict resolution, informal counseling and community outreach. They used to supply dinner for the kids, but nowadays just serve a nutritious snack.
Raso says that before, there were kids coming in who lived on the streets that would need a good meal, but lately the teenagers that come to The Door come from homes where they get served dinner.
Lately, there are more boys than girls at the centre, Raso explains, because of the renovations. Once they started renovating the break dancing room, where the boys hung out, the boys moved to the computer room. That was where the girls hung out. She noticed the girls didn’t want to mix with the boys and since then, fewer have attended.
Raso is back in school again, taking a one-year teacher’s degree at the University of Ottawa. She says she wants to be an elementary school teacher so she can use some of her skills in crime prevention to make a difference for younger kids.
“Ask any kid in Grade 1who they thought might be in trouble later on in life, and I think they could pick out the people pretty successfully,” says Raso. “There are signs at an early age.”
“Teachers are called upon for other roles than just teaching curriculum,” says Raso. “I don’t have a lot of that knowledge yet, but I think I have certain skills that will help me.”
Raso has had to cut her hours since school started. She now works 10 to 15 hours a week at The Door. She says she drifts in and out of her office.
“She’s a very friendly person,” says Tamara Kralik, assistant program manager.
The other teenage boys are too shy to answer questions about Raso. They jokingly say, “she’s evil,” and “she told me to slap him,” all of which are untrue, confirms Dickinson.
The boys say a few words in Vietnamese, and then point to one of the part-time staff members named Dung Nguyen. He is sitting with the boys and they begin to call him Raso’s “pet.” He blushes and denies the accusation. He won’t talk and just shakes his head no and laughs. The boys sit around on couches and talk, quite happy in the disarray of the centre.
Raso shows pictures of the centre before the renovations began. She says she has a vision that the centre will become even more welcoming to outsiders than before.
“I don’t know if there are enough neighbouring friendly environments for youth,” says Raso when asked about the lack of youth centers in Centretown.
In a few months time, the carpets will be laid, the ping-pong table set up again, and the break dancing room will be cleared of furniture. Raso says she would be content with a few more new kids coming.
“I’d be happy if we had 25 to 30 kids here on a given night,” says Raso. Hopefully, Raso will be around to see all the changes she started at the centre. She says if she gets a full-time job as a teacher she’ll have to give up her work at The Door. This will be a loss for the centre.
“We’re very happy to have her here,” says Dickinson. “She has our best interests at heart.”