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Michelle Duscheneau & Eric Warner

"We're empowering youth through a community development arcade."

Michelle Duscheneau, a graduate student in the Special Individualized Program, and Eric Warner, a recent graduate from the Bachelor’s of Commerce degree, received the Experiential Learning grant to work on their project called Press Start. Press Start is an arcade and upcycling project led by marginalized youth who are supported by adult collaborators. Their mission is to provide youth with a space to build community, grow as individuals, develop a variety of useful skills and work together to make a change in their communities. This project emerged after a yearlong consultation led by five young women (15-18 years of age) who interviewed more than 200 youth to identify the needs of youth in Pointe Saint-Charles.

Most pressing of the needs identified was a need for “by youth, for youth” spaces that provide real decision-making power as well as employment opportunities in the community. Additionally, environmental concerns and numerous mentions of discrimination such as police profiling became critical discussions among the group. After analyzing the data from the consultation process, the youth and adult leaders concluded that developing a youth-led business would allow them the space to address many of the needs and issues identified. Since, Press Start has remained a space to discuss issues of environmental justice and racial justice through anti-oppressive programming while also providing empowering employment opportunities for youth as co-leaders of the arcade and through our mentorship program.

Eric Warner, working mainly with the finances, found the process grounded him in the knowledge he gained during his degree. “Working with Press Start has allowed me to improve my understanding of how to provide healthy budgeting & financial practices to small non-for-profits and co-operatives.  When working with small teams, it’s essential that financial work be as simple as possible. This minimizes the allocation of time to financial tasks, allowing the team to focus primarily on operations” says Warner.  “My time has also introduced me to financial organization in times of uncertainty. Because of COVID-19, budgetary projections have carried a high degree of uncertainty, with both costs and revenues. This has called for the need to budget flexibly, with an ability to adapt to changing realities and projections.”

Michelle also picked up important financial based knowledge and skills. “This experiential learning project was an opportunity to apply emancipatory economic practices to a business related to both my masters and doctoral studies. In particular, developing ethical and sustainable finance systems in collaboration with the youth team.” Learning about the financial aspect of the project was pivotal in the sustainability of Press Start. Though she had minimal prior experience with financial planning, her partnership with Eric allowed for a meaningful skill exchange.

“It was no small feat for a non-hierarchical organization with minimal experience in finances, all this during a pandemic. We are so fortunate to have met Eric who has spent the past eight plus months supporting us as we become literate in financial planning, developing tools that are useful and accessible to our whole team. Eric and I have had some complex budgeting situations that I am pleased to say that we are navigating. Press Start now has various financial systems in place to ensure the on-going tracking our budget. We continue to meet on a weekly basis as we streamline our tools, develop our budget for 2021-2022 as well as co-create a framework that makes sense for Press Start’s financial planning and sustainability in the long-term.”

Contact Press Start to learn more.

This article was written by Emily Andrews.

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