Jamil Jivani went to meet with Premier Doug Ford to talk about what the government could do to better help those in disadvantaged communities.

He left with a new job.

Jivani, Ford’s new “advocate for community opportunities,” is the province’s first special adviser on “building bridges between vulnerable communities and the government to make sure the funding is in the right place” and to make recommendations for improvements.

“My entire career has been outside of government … and I’ve been learning from families who don’t feel like they have a voice with people in power,” Jivani told the Star on Tuesday at Queen’s Park.

“I’m hoping to bring some of what I learned into government.”

Jivani, a community organizer and author of Why Young Men: Rage, Race and the Crisis of Identity, said he had spoken with members of the Conservative caucus as well as policy-makers about his book and ideas, and they said he needed to meet with Ford — which he did, in August.

The meeting “started off with me saying I think we need to build better bridges between communities that are being left out of the prosperity of this province,” he said. “... Too many people aren’t a part of that success.”

“I talked about what I wanted to do and he said ‘Why don’t you come and bring that to us? Tell us what you’ve learned, tell us what you’re hearing.”

Jivani said he told Ford he wanted to “help build that bridge — you need to hear more from that community and they need to know that you care.”

He said he thinks of Ford as “someone trying to challenge the status quo …I saw someone who might be open-minded to trying something new.”

In a statement, Ford said “we are appointing Jamil Jivani as Ontario’s Advocate for Community Opportunities in order to engage people from all walks of life and help us tackle some serious problems” including guns and gangs, human trafficking, racism, educational achievement and housing.

Jivani “has an impressive track record of building better communities and empowering young people to reach their full potential,” Ford also said.

The part-time position will entail Jivani working with about six or seven ministries. His appointment runs to March 31, 2022, and he will be paid $500 a day up to a maximum of $72,000 a year.

He said it was important that it not be full-time “so I keep one foot in and one foot out — so I’m accountable to the community.”

Jivani was born in Toronto and grew up in Brampton. After a troubled youth, he turned his life around, attending York University and then Yale law school. He has been a visiting professor, community organizer and is heavily involved in philanthropic work, including with the Pinball Clemons Foundation.

Jivani is also a cancer survivor, after having been diagnosed with lymphoma in 2018, the same year his book was published.

In his advocate role, he plans to meet with those on the front-line in communities and “generate recommendations about how to support what’s working well already or how you design and redesign things,” he said. “My job here is to push — to push us to do new things and bring new ideas to the table” and create an action plan.

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Jivani said when he first met Ford last summer, he expected “to give him a copy of my book and tell him what I think and maybe he’ll call me back one day when he’s ready to hear something.

“In that meeting, he was very open with me about his interest in what some people call the forgotten communities of our province ... people who are marginalized in various ways,” he said.

While he doesn’t have a set budget, the government will invest in any initiatives he brings forward that Ford approves.

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