"Approximately 1 in 5 children and youth in Ontario has a mental health challenge. About 70% of mental health challenges have their onset in childhood or youth" (Canadian Mental Health Association, 2022). 

Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario (YWHO) aims to bring the right services to youth and their families at the right time and in the right place. YWHO is improving Ontario’s mental health and addiction services for youth and their families by providing rapid access to mental health and substance use services with walk in, low barrier services and clear pathways to service. YWHO provides evidence-based interventions and supported transitions to specialized care services when the severity of need is evident. It is a "one-stop-shop" for youth wellbeing that practices through an anti-oppressive and anti-racist lens, to provide high quality, integrated services that keep youths and their families at the center of care. The pandemic has affected everyone very differently, especially our youth in Scarborough! 

​"The serious effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of our youth are alarmingly evident in the increase of calls to Kids Help Phone during 2020. In 2019, Kids Help Phone had 1.9 million connections. In 2020, they had 4.5 million connections with young people through their phone line, text and website access points. This increase in connections, year over year, represents an alarming 137 per cent increase" (Scott, 2021).​

​Mental health is not openly discussed in many cultures. We are here to help! Identifying this problem early on can improve the health outcomes in life. We provide inclusive, and welcoming space where participants can be social and have access to a broad range of service and supports delivering in an integrated fashion. The services provided range from mental health support, substance using, employment, housing, peer support, and education.

Any youth from ages 12-29 can access care here at SCHC, in partnership with Strides Toronto, by simply sending an email to jadduru@schcontario.ca or, if you have a primary care worker already, you can fill out the Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario Referral Form and send it over to jadduru@schcontario.ca.

During the 2021-22 academic year, University of Toronto Scarborough Management students grew more than 90kg of produce on campus and donated their harvest to the Scarborough Centre for Healthy Communities (SCHC) food bank, with plans to scale up for the next growing season. 

“Our farming initiative brings together students, faculty, and staff from across the University, from a number of backgrounds both academically and culturally, to one central place around one central theme: food security. We are unified in the goal to learn through serving our neighbours,” said Dave Fenton, whose portfolio oversees Partnerships, Innovation, and Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) in The BRIDGE with the Department of Management and UTSC Library.

“Donations like this are valued, especially now, with the recent 47% increase of visits to food banks as a result of the pandemic. Scarborough is a community where racialization, discrimination, and poverty have severely illuminated health inequities. Our partnership with the University demonstrates how much more can be accomplished when we work together,” McGonegal said. “The [WIL farm] supported the nearly 4,000 monthly visits made to the SCHC Food Bank by members of the Scarborough community.” 

More than 30 U of T Scarborough students across the Management and work-study programs have been engaged in the WIL farm initiative since spring 2021. Project components were embedded in Management Professor Bill McConkey’s Innovation (MGSC35) course, where students validated and assessed the farm’s business potential, and in Professor Vania Sakelaris’s Consulting and Contracting New Ways of Work (MGSC20) course supporting the development of a scale-up strategy. 

​“This initiative not only provided students with an opportunity to simulate a management consulting role and to apply their knowledge and skills, but also to share the output of their collective efforts with a live project sponsor versus a hypothetical one,” Sakelaris said. “Students were exposed to valuable strategic analysis frameworks that can be applied to any business in any industry.” ​

“In order to foster a future generation of environmentally conscious leaders, the first steps are to spread awareness as well as contribute to sustainable endeavors in our own communities. Sustainability is no longer about doing less harm. It’s about doing more good, which starts by planting the seeds of sustainable growth,” added Austin Gumbs, UTSC Management Co-op student and Senior Student Advisor with SIG. ​