Teenagers had to Ottawa conference on poverty with lots of life experience
- Amanda Jelowicki

Jodie Wilson lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Pointe Claire with her mother and grandmother.

Her mother, a nurse, sleeps on the sofa while 16-year old Jodie shares a bedroom with her granny.

Her mother can't afford a car, and Jodie said she was often ridiculed by high-school classmates because of her financial plight.

"Kids can be really cruel. They used to tease me a lot." She said."So I wear the same clothes to school sometimes, and I can't afford Nikes. I felt worthless at high school because my friends had more money that me. I felt I deserved being made fun of because I was poor. But it's no-body's fault."

Jodie knows what it's like to be poor in Montreal.

She is hoping her experience will help better the lives of other youth in similar situations nationwide.

She is one of 150 youth delegates between 14 and 19 years of age from across Canada participation in the Students Commission five-day national workshop to discuss child poverty. Twenty-six of the delegates are from Quebec.

The participant fee is $750 per delegate. Provincial youth groups like YMCAs and the Optimist Club recommended each delegate to conference organizers and helped the youth raise money or secure sponsorship to pay their fees.

This year's conference, which began yesterday, is being held in Ottawa and is part of a three-year initiative on child poverty called Sharing Resources 2000.

The aim of the conference is to get young people involved in bettering their own lives, said conference project coordinator Denise Campbell

"We want to bring youth together and we want to make sure adults from every sector know what youth think and feel and need,"Campbell, 23,said.

Karine Potvin, a conference worker explained that this year's meeting will feature discussion groups to define child poverty and to envision ways to fight poverty. Recommendations will be presented to Governor-general Romeo Leblanc and Deputy Prime Minister Herb Gray.

"We want to work out what the young feel the government should be doing, what they see as an answer, and how child poverty can disappear."Potvin said.

Statistics Canada reports show that in1996, 21 per cent of Canadians children lived in low-income families compared to 22 per cent in Quebec.

Jonathan Guido, a 16-year old Quebec delegate, said that he doesn't know of antipoverty initiatives the government is now undertaking, but would use the conference to educate himself.

He moved to Canada from India, where his family was wealthy, eight years ago in the wake of his parent's divorce.

His mother's family disowned her, and upon their arrival in Canada, his mother had to live off welfare cheques to feed Jonathan and his sister.

"I lived in a really violent, really poor neighborhood,"He said. It was a shock but I'm really glad I lived that shock because it changed me."