For far too long, Toronto has been plagued by youth violence. Youth violence occurring in Toronto has significantly increased in the recent past. The issue of youth violence in the City of Toronto is so significant that it affects almost everyone. The social and economic exclusion has been identified as a significant factor which happens in marginalized communities within the city. Consequently, life quality, social, and economic wellbeing of the city in its entirety has been affected. The most groups of young people impacted by violence are those coming from the perceived financially deprived and socially isolated families. Lack of resources hinders these groups to interact with others to promote community cohesion, education, and access to physical activities. To address this problem, the creation of public recreation areas will help many youths access the necessary facilities for their development. Therefore, for the City of Toronto to effectively address youth violence, more public funds need to be invested in public recreation to allow all youths to engage in physical, interactive, and educational activities equally.

In support of my position that more public funds should be directed towards developing public recreation centers is first based on the fact that the community plays the role as a socialization agent.  Community socialization at all levels whether between support groups and youths or youths with other teenagers significantly helps to shape both problem behaviors and youth development. Therefore, this puts the community resources and facilities at the center of creating a suitable setting for positively influencing and addressing the issue of youth violence. One of the appropriate resources and facilities with the society that can do a great deal to address the issue of violence is public recreation centers. In terms of community socialization, recreation centers allow many youth groups to have a forum for convergence. In the process, many activities are undertaken that are meant to develop youths and shape their behaviors towards positive thinking. This goes all the way engaging youths in a beneficial way hence no youth will imagine of violence.

Prior studies on the correlation between extracurricular activities and violence among the teenager groups indicated positive results. For instance, Eccles and Barber were able to establish that young groups that participated in pro-social activities could achieve highly in academics. At the same time, these adolescents behaviors were shaped in a way that they could involve in risky behaviors such as violence and drug abuse. Besides shaping the way of thinking of the youths, participating in physical and pro-social activities ensures that the youths are throughout occupied. If they are not at home helping in domestic works, these groups are at the recreation centers participating in physical activities such as plays. Hence, they find less time to engage in violent and dangerous behavior activities that risk their lives including drug abuse that has been found the most significant risk factor towards violent acts by youths. Thus, there is a need to have more funds directed towards having as many public recreations as possible to ensure that youths make it easy to access them for their own physical and pro-social activities

Majority of the studies have agreed for the fact that most of the youth perpetrators of violence within the City of Toronto are those from poor and marginal communities. This is evident based on the idea that these youths do not afford the highly paid recreation centers that currently exist in the city. Instead, the low-income level does not allow them to have time for recreation and interact with others for educational purposes. Little is expected of these youths in terms of positive self-development and behavior adoption. Instead, it creates an opportune moment for the poor youths to plan on how to perpetrate evil activities which include causing violence. In a similar situation, the wealthy members of the society such as the politicians would use these poor youths to advance their agendas as they are the primary and most natural targets. However, in the presence of public recreation centers, youths from poor and marginal communities will have an opportunity to interact with others, share ideas and access self-development and positive behaviors. Thus, there is a need to have many public recreation areas to accommodate all youths.

Lack of educational opportunities has been found as a significant cause for violence among youths especially those from low-income families. Additionally, most of the violent activities have been found to occur during summer when many youths between the age of 14 and 30 are on vacation. With the research showing that this age bracket is the most impacted groups means that during holidays, these youths are less concerned with educational matters. Thus, they find a lot of opportunities to engage in unacceptable behaviors like violence. Once we have public recreation around Toronto, youths will have a place to converge to advance their educational matters, interact and exchange ideas. There is, therefore, need to have these areas secreted for youths to meet.

In conclusion, therefore, it is evident that investing more money in creating public recreating is an effective way that the City of Toronto will help address youth violence. The community has been identified as an agent of socialization which it should do everything with its means to ensure that youth have a platform to develop. Having recreation centers creates this needed platform for teenagers to develop and improve their behaviors. Public recreation as well allows teens to have physical and pro-social activities that help address idleness and mental build up hence less time to plan and perpetrate violence. Teenagers from low-income families get equal opportunity to engage in life-changing and educational activities to impact the way they live through public recreation. Therefore, having many public recreation areas is an effective way to fight youth violence in Toronto.

 
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