HEYY Story

 

In 1996, five youth 'Speak Outs' were held in Crescent Town, G.A. Brown, Secord, Thornecliffe, Stan Wadlow and Leaside communities.  The Speak Outs were intended to provide a voice to the youth of East York and to identify their needs and experiences.  A survey was distributed to 176 participants.  The results of the survey indicated youth would be interested in using a peer-to-peer support phone line. Following the survey two-grade 12 students spent three weeks researching the other phone lines in Toronto and determined there were not opportunities for youth to be phone line volunteers, especially at the age of 15. The HEYY line was created.

The HEYY Line is a peer support phone line operated for youth by youth.  The program provides leadership and skills development for youth between the ages of 15-21.  Youth and adult volunteers who respond to callers in need of a friendly listener, referrals and support operate the phone line.  Volunteers are diverse and currently represent 20 different language groups.

The major activity is leadership and skills development for youth through the following activities:  recruitment, screening and training of volunteers, phone support work, Speak Out groups, Youth Planning Action Committee and fundraising.  As well as presentations to funders and international delegates, e.g. A Japan delegation visited in 1998 and invited 3 HEYY representatives to Japan in 1999.
 
Youth are required to undergo training for 12 weeks, totaling 45 hours, to prepare to be on the line.  We provide youth with expert trainers from: Planned Parenthood, Teaching, Educating and Confronting Homophobia (TEACH), Aids Committee of Toronto, Beat the Street, Sheena’s Place, Toronto Rave Info Project, Parkdale Community Health, Education Wife Assault, Toronto Rape Crisis Centre, METRAC, Neighbourhood Centre and Parks and Recreation, Legal Aid of Ontario, Toronto Public Health, a professional therapist who provides training in answering suicide calls.
 
Training providers also assist in evaluating volunteer skill level, identifying training needs and assessing the readiness of volunteers to provide the service to callers.
 
In the fall of 2003 an additional training component was added to deal with callers who experience violence from bullying, gang involvement or harassment.
 
At the end of their training youth volunteers acquire knowledge and develop skills in the following areas: active listening skills, conflict resolution, grief and bereavement, sexually transmitted infections, HIV/AIDS, mental health issues, rape crisis and sexual assault, eating disorders, sexual diversity, birth control, suicide, street involved youth, harm reduction approaches to substance abuse, team building, counseling, anti-racism, anti-oppression making referrals using the Blue Book and HEYY Line policies and procedures.  The youth network with all of the agencies that present these topics when they are on the phone line.
 
Additional training opportunities exist for youth in the following areas: fundraising, personnel training, board involvement, public speaking, marketing and promotion, website development and general office administration --- to name just a few.

Adult coaches attend training with youth to ensure that they understand how to support youth volunteers and are aware and sensitive to the kinds of issues that callers may present.

HEYY helpline is exclusively answered by youth and is completely volunteer run.  All youth and coaches are volunteers, none are paid. Other phone lines are answered by a combination of paid staff and volunteers.

HEYY volunteers speak more than 20 languages. This ensures youth from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds have access to services.

HEYY is a local youth helpline with the ability to respond to a broad variety of issues presented by callers. The helpline fills a gap in the Teen Sex line service, which is not available on Thursday and Friday evenings.

Youth aged 15 or older are trained to be on the line.  The average volunteer base for HEYY is 60 in comparison to other lines that have a base of 20. HEYY line has trained over 450 youth in the past twelve years.

To make services more accessible to street youth, the helpline accepts collect calls within Toronto.

The HEYY website was designed to reach youth that seek access to information that is youth focused.  Eighty-five per cent of youth in Canada between the ages of 12-17 spend 9.3 hours per week on the internet.  seventy-five per cent searching for information.  The HEYY site provides an introduction to the helpline, volunteer opportunities, information and resources as well as links to other sites such as Safe Teens and the Aboriginal Youth Network.  In December of 2006, HEYY launched the HEYY Forum, which is an on-line youth community with a live chat function, where youth can chat with HEYY volunteers live from 6-9.  In November of 2009, we launched our new TTY service to be inclusive to the deaf and hard of hearing community.

 

Our Services…

 

We're completely anonymous and confidential, which means that nothing you say will ever go beyond that phone call. We do not have equipment to trace calls. Therefore there is no way for us to get any information on who calls unless if you choose to share it with us. You can even use a fake name if you don’t want to use your real name. That’s perfectly fine to do that cause your name has nothing to do with the reason you call the line.

 

Among all of our volunteers there are several languages spoken. Our list is ever changing depending on our volunteers, but all together we are incredibly multilingual. Our languages include: 

  • Arabic
  • Bulgarian
  • Cantonese
  • Creole
  • Dutch English
  • Farsi
  • French
  • Greek
  • Gujarati
  • Hindi
  • Mandarin
  • Portuguese
  • Punjabi
  • Serbian
  • Shangainese
  • Spanish
  • Tagalog
  • Urdu
 
HEYY Story