BY MARC LALONDE

marc.lalonde@transcontinental.ca

A unique new program for Dorval residents will do their best to keep your teens on the straight and narrow this year.

If you’ve just moved to the West Island, you’ve probably already noticed that local parks become magnets for teenagers in the hours after sundown. It’s quiet, there are no parents around and they can operate under cover of darkness.

Dorval is taking steps to give the kids hanging out in the parks a more positive outlook on life and to ensure local homeowners they have nothing to fear from a group of teens sitting together on a bench. A new program, very similar to a program run by the YMCA in the late ‘90s that saw trained youth workers go around from park to park to help kids to something more positive with their time.

“It was designed to give these kids someone to talk to, someone to relate to,” Dorval Mayor Edgar Rouleau said. “We want to give these kids some positive role models.”

The trained youth workers are going into parks “just to talk to kids. It’s a positive, proactive thing, and the hope is we can keep the kids from getting into something serious down the road,” he said.

If you haven’t already seen them, you’ll recognize the kids by their sudden silence when an adult walks by, the crowd usually gathered around a picnic table or a jungle gym, not really doing anything; the kids ‘are just chillin.’

A Dorval recreation department staffer in charge of the program said the idea is for the workers to build a relationship with kids they see hanging around and to help them find better ways to use their time.

“We want them to learn to trust the workers and we hope that they will listen when the workers try to help them find ways to re-orient the way they spend leisure time, like into activities or a job,” said Dorval leisure and recreation animator Ron Patenaude.

The workers will target all of Dorval’s 12 parks and other locations where young people gather in summertime, like the Pine Beach underpass and train station, Patenaude added.

“Wherever there’s a need, that’s where they’ll be.”

The project targets youth aged from 12 all the way to 25, but those numbers are not set in stone.

“For sure, we won’t refuse to help someone if they are 26,” Patenaude said.

The project is relatively inexpensive for Dorval; it’s about $10,000 for the two salaries and the city has furnished a van for the workers’ use.

“We think it’s a great investment,” Rouleau said.