The Bottom-Up Revolution
In this episode, Uthish Ganesh tells the story of returning to teach in the neighborhood where he grew up and refusing to accept his school’s bad reputation. From a boys’ group with a perfect graduation rate to a student-run food program serving hundreds of families, he shows what happens when you stop believing deficit narratives and raise the bar instead.
Transcript (Lightly edited for readability)
Hello there, and welcome to this Bottom Up Short. I'm Norm with Strong Towns, and as always, I am excited to share with you stories of individuals that I get to connect with who are doing the work of helping to build stronger communities where they live.
Today my guest is Uthish Ganesh. Uthish is doing a whole bunch of work on restoring relationships and working with local officials, as well as government housing experts and others who are participants in his community, in order to advance really meaningful projects. Welcome, Uthish. Good to have you on Bottom Up Shorts.
Thanks for having me. I appreciate this opportunity.
Can you share for our audience just what you are up to? There's so much, and yet it's really connected to a Strong Towns vision for embracing change in our communities in ways that people can walk together in improving their places.
By trade, I am a teacher. That's my full-time job. I am teaching in the neighborhood I was born and raised in, and I initially never wanted to teach at my school. My school had a negative reputation and was not considered a school people wanted to go to. I initially said I was just going to work with kids in youth-in-custody programs — that was my main bread and butter. I thought there was no way I could make a change as a teacher in my neighborhood. So let me go elsewhere.
At that point in my life, I left grad school when I was getting a bunch of offers to do some really cool projects. There was a project in the Bronx I was invited to, a project in London, England I was invited to, and one in New Mexico, of all places — the goal being to help reform the school or reform the school community. Things just went off in my head and I thought, why would I go to a different part of the world when I can do this for my community here?
When I was working in custody programs, probably three or four months into another gig, one of the youth approached me and mentioned that if he had had me as a teacher in high school, he wouldn't have dropped out. That was one of the first domino pieces. I remember going to the basement of this place — it was called CAMH, the Center for Addiction and Mental Health — and I called up my now-mentor principal, a long-time believer, and said, "Listen, is this gig still available?" We figured it out, and I've been there for eight years now.
I've been happy to be part of this big change. It is now an Active Learning Hub, and schools from Texas are coming to visit our school. Schools from different parts of our province are coming asking, "Hey, what are you guys doing?" I let them see everything — underbelly and all. We're now a school where I'm very happy to lead the professional learning, and we are front-runners doing a lot of the work where other schools in our neighborhood are saying, "Can you get us some support? Can you teach us how you do this?" That level was really cool. That's my day job.
One of the things that always keeps me going is that community is my battery pack. Any day I just don't feel well, or a day where I wonder if this is even worth it, guardian angels above send a few folks my way to say, "Hey, thank you for the impact you've had on my son," or "Thank you so much for doing this for my daughter, for my cousin." That's what makes things turn for me.
One of the phrases I love using is: why not us? Why can't it be our community? Why does it always have to be a community that is more affluent, that is closer to the downtown core, that gets certain things? When we notice a gap, that gap is an opportunity. We just have to fill it with some pilot projects. I'm very big on throwing the name "pilot project" on anything and asking for forgiveness later. You put "pilot project" on it, and you're good to go.
Can you describe a couple of those pilot projects?
Absolutely. One of the things we wanted to do was have discussions about education and race — that was one of the big things. We asked ourselves what pillars of equity needed to be addressed for our students. A lot of the professional learning we did was focused on how you make sure children show up to school feeling valued. We had to confront some very hard pieces of data. I stood up for a lot of folks and said, "Go ask 100% of our student body: Do you have a caring adult at home? Do you have access to certain resources?" We were getting less than 30% checking off all the boxes.
If our youth have to go through hurdles to come to our school — for example, in my old government housing neighborhood, I remember having to walk down certain parts of the staircase, having to use certain exits because it wasn't too safe — and then just getting to school felt like the big accomplishment of the day. I know a number of students who grew up on the same floor as me in my apartment building who are now attending the school, and whenever they arrive, we always have a little check-in conversation. We needed staff to see that.
We focus a lot on just empowering students. One student wrote a love letter to herself. The intention was: write this letter to yourself, then we'll read it to staff. We gave staff an abridged version of the harsh realities that young woman had faced in her schooling life — and then coming to a school like ours was night and day. She mentioned how she was overlooked, how opportunities were never given. When she finally came to our school, opportunity was given, a shot was given.
A lot of the boys I work with, especially in my anti-violence groups — just give them the opportunity, and they'll be okay. I'm a big believer that if you raise the bar high, whether it's a child or a community group, they will rise to it. They will often exceed expectations. But you have to keep the standard high. I'm a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, so when Mike Tomlin introduced "the standard is the standard," I ran with it.
One of the things that stands out is that at Strong Towns, some of the most important things we can do involve the physical environment — and one of the most crucial words we need to keep front and center is creating dignified places. Dignity is one of those things you can communicate a lot with, without that much. It can look like a sign that's simply improved, or it can look like addressing the signs of neglect.
Can you share a little bit about the challenge in Scarborough and the GTA more broadly? There's this version of what the Scarborough voter wants — this claim that everything needs to be unfettered access by the automobile — and yet your work takes you into direct contact with people who say, "No, what I most need is something that dignifies me as I engage in my community." Can you share some of your reflections on that idea, and especially some of the tactical things we can do to dignify our places?
Having that backbone — having a system or just a group of people that trust you — it makes a whole world of difference. I'm very big on the idea that if you have a positive mentor, your life changes. My life has changed because of mentors who have been doing a lot of grassroots work, a lot of anti-violence work in the city of Toronto.
One of the things I'm very proud of is my boys' group. We call ourselves the Young Male Leadership Group, and what started out as a group of seven to nine boys learning how to tie a tie, fix their resume, apply for a job, and be better siblings and sons morphed into a group that creates transformative change in our neighborhood. We now have 55 youth in our group.
The initial recruitment began with youth who had been suspended, expelled from previous schools, or who were behind on their attendance and had behavioral issues. It also stemmed from something called homeschooling programs. Essentially, those programs take a child out of the physical classroom and place them within the school building, but without numeracy support, literacy support, or social well-being support.
A lot of the boys targeted in those programs, when they get to grade nine and their first class has 34 students, their energy is high. It's easy to say, "They have a lot of energy — let's give them some extra tasks, let's work with them." But some folks might say, "They're being disruptors," and send them right to the office, creating that cycle all over again. If we're doing that to our future leaders — oh, man.
We recruited that group of youth. In Ontario, it's mandatory for youth to complete 40 hours of volunteer service to graduate, and we prioritize that. Now we have 55 boys in our group, and we have had a perfect graduation rate over the last eight years. We're going to graduate 33 students this June. These were boys who were written off multiple times — in their schooling life, in their community life — but now they're morphing into community leaders, and I'm very proud of them.
They lead a project called the Bulldog Café — I teach at a school whose mascot is the Bulldog, and no one wants to wear the mascot costume, but maybe we'll change that one day. We feed about 200 families a month with non-perishable food items, feminine hygiene products, and other school essentials. Sometimes we get donations of backpacks, bike helmets, and additional supplies. My boys run the whole thing — the whole thing.
They're defeating narratives every day. There was one staff member who came up to me talking about one of the boys I work with, giving a pretty much deficit narrative. I asked them to come after school and see what this boy does. We have thousands of physical items ready to go, and that young man was in charge of all of the inventory. Anyone who has managed a food pantry program knows that numbers and inventory is one of the most demanding things you can imagine.
The staff member saw this boy and said, "He does the numbers for everything." I said, "Yeah, he does." That began a conversation: "He's not doing so well in my physics class, but maybe we can work on a project together, work on some steps." Those small things just snowballed.
So we have the perfect graduation rate. We feed about 200 families a month. They're also doing some community outreach. In a couple of weeks, we're actually teaming up with a tennis program, and we're working with younger students on their literacy skills. In Canada that's grades one through seven or eight — literacy work in the morning and tennis and physical activity in the afternoon.
The only tennis players I know are the Williams sisters, Federer, Djokovic, maybe Nadal — that's the full extent of it. But my big thing is that it doesn't matter if I like tennis or not. Youth deserve the opportunity. A lot of programs in Scarborough especially have been defunded or are under the threat of being defunded, and they're doing really heart-affirming work. It breaks my heart, because these are the engines that do a lot of the big things that the city might later point to at a higher level — "Crime has been reduced by this much" or "We've seen this positive number rise." But very rarely do we see the grassroots workers doing the front-line work being congratulated and being compensated.
That goes a long way. A lot of our leaders — even civil rights leaders, even folks who are doing the work today — they die poor. This cannot be the rhetoric. I'll die for my community; there are things I would lay my life on the line for. But if we are driving civic action and the economic sustainability piece isn't there, we are going right into a wall, and we're driving future-generation change-makers into the ground as well. If we're cutting people off and demotivating them — whether it's lack of funding or whether it's the news targeting your neighborhood with disparaging images and never highlighting the positive stuff — it creates a cycle, and that generational cycle needs to be broken on whatever level. This podcast is breaking generational cycles. A lot of my friends who are doing community healing projects are breaking cycles. We need to empower folks who are breaking those cycles.
Wow. I wish this were the Thursday episode so we could run for 45 minutes, because this is outstanding. I did want to ask: can you share something of your own story and some of the ways in which it has equipped you for the work you're doing currently?
I never thought education was for me. I never thought community work was for me. But every single time I turn left, the universe just tilts my head back to the center.
I was supposed to be a poetry professor. That was my pathway. I had all these awards for English — I was one of the first kids from my project neighborhood to receive them — and it was great, wonderful, don't get me wrong. But my heart was not filled. It was just not filled. Then when I started doing direct teaching, I thought, why is this warming my heart?
I've been doing grassroots work since I was 13 years old. I'm now 31. I did not see the work I'd done in the past as grassroots work. I just saw it as: there's a gap, let's fill it. You see things that need to be changed — let's change it, and let's change it together in a collaborative effort. But every single time I think, let me go a different route, the universe says, "Hey, look back here."
I remember being a teacher for the first week, coming back home, walking through the park in our neighborhood, and seeing some of the kids. They said, "Yo, you're the teacher!" I said, "Wait, what?" They said, "Yo, you got the job at that school — you're going to teach me next year!" Now I teach them, and it's a world-shifting process. I always put out the idea of: just try. Just try.
The idea of building relationships or restoring relationships — I grew up in a neighborhood right beside a big police station, and there were not many positive or proactive events going on. For the last 30 years of my life, police have been there every single night for the most negative reasons. That's not me saying they can't do their job, but they're not there for proactive stuff, and there are a lot of proactive things going on.
Last week, we had a sit-down dinner session with those police officers — at the sergeant level, actually — and a lot of community members, and we just broke bread. For the first time in my lifetime, the first time in the lifetime of the senior folks who've lived in that building for 50 years, they felt that something was changing. We realized something was changing. Now we have some workshops being set up.
I don't want people thinking you have to do something monumental. Leverage your relationships. Just leverage them. Say, "I'll help you out with this — can you help me out with this?" Just ask. It has now snowballed into something really cool, and breaking generational cycles is at the core.
Yesterday morning, I did a session with newcomers to our neighborhood, and one of the experiences they're facing is that they can't communicate with their children — whether it's a language barrier, whether it's systemic barriers, there are so many things. We started working with a lot of those women who are part of that program. At the end of the session, confidence started to rise. They started using the sentence starters we had introduced. Change can happen at a very practical, tangible level. It starts with one person, and it just rolls. It starts with two people, and it just rolls.
In terms of tips, I would always say: use data. Find any piece of data and roll with it. People will listen to you when you have examples. Learn the policy language, and start with listening. Every problem doesn't have to be diagnosed with a prescribed solution. Sometimes listening is the first three steps, and action comes later on.
Don't compare your middle to someone else's chapter five or chapter ten. People are on their own different pathways. When you do community work, your soul is at the center. So how do you feed your soul? How do you protect yourself? For some folks, Sunday church is massive. For others, they need quiet time with their children, or they need to get away and be in nature. Whatever it is, just do it. Who knows — maybe some of the kids playing tennis with us in the next few weeks will find their salvation there in a couple of years. Find what makes those things tick for you.
Wow, you've woven in so many words of wisdom here, and I have a lot to think about over the weekend as I reflect on it. I would love to hear: is there a particular suggestion or tip you would like to offer as a closing takeaway?
The deficit narratives — once they creep into your head, you've got to be careful. Have those conversations with yourself. Have those difficult conversations with yourself. Ask yourself if your heart is in it. There are some days where my heart is not in it. I'm like, "What am I doing? I'm so confused."
But the best thing that happens is that community as your battery pack — or your family as your battery pack, your pet dog as your battery pack, whatever it might be — rely on your battery pack. You're never a burden. If you're relying on them, you're never too much for someone's plate. You're just not. People just need to hear that, because they're scared they might add to someone's plate. They don't want to be an annoyance. They don't want to seek help from someone. They don't want someone to take time out of their day for them.
Your circle is there for a reason. You picked your circle. You manifested your circle. Have that conversation in your head with them. Rely on them. They will be there to support you. They'll be there to challenge you, and they'll be there to make sure you respect yourself and the work that you do. It's so easy to get lost. Once you have that North Star — once you have that purpose of "this is how I want to see the world, I want to see it not just with my eyes but with my heart" — lock in on that.
I have seen folks who've been ostracized, folks who've been written off, now leading big change. The number of youth I have the privilege of working with who want to go into social work, become teachers, civil engineers, policy makers — they have these dreams because we gave them opportunity and said, "Hey, I believe in you." If I ever see a child, or if I'm working with a family, I say, "If you believed in yourself half as much as I believe in you, you'd be walking on the moon." Believe in yourself. Even on the darkest days, if you tell yourself, "All will be well" — at some point, things will be well. Just keep faith. That's my big takeaway. Just keep faith.
Wonderful. So much woven into this. Thank you for sharing. What are some ways that people can follow your work or get in touch with you?
Beautiful. We have an Instagram page that's launched. We have some videos going up as well. It's @UthishGanesh. If you ever want to send me an email, it's [email protected]. If you ever want to plan, bounce ideas, need help critiquing ideas, or just want to share really cool things, please do. I love learning and listening. If you want to invite me to write about, read about, or speak about something, please let me know. The more people who want to do community work — especially in a world where policies can stymie community work — the merrier. Please do reach out.
Well, a closing thank you for being on Bottom Up Shorts — this has been fantastic. What stands out is that you are not a burden, especially as you seek to lift up others. A key part of what it takes to be a local hero is just that recognition: I can be taking on, step by step, those small things that over time really begin to build you up. Uthish, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much.
I appreciate it. Thank you for this opportunity.
For sure. Folks, I hope you're just as inspired by what Uthish shared. Take care, and take care of your places.
This episode was produced by Strong Towns, a nonprofit movement for building financially resilient communities. If what you heard today matters to you, deepen your connection by becoming a Strong Towns member at strongtowns.org/membership.