Regent Park Focus

The Diva Girls program at Regent Park Focus wrapped up last Friday at the centre for the summer. The girls were excited but sad at the same time. Nevertheless, the Diva Girls may start up again for some workshops this summer. A good group of familiar faces showed up and some new girls too. The girls started off by writing a journal about what the Diva Girls meant to them. They also had to highlight two important Diva girls trips or workshops which included; Healthy Living, Healthy relationships, International Women’s Day special radio show, Science Centre, team work, role models and knitting workshops. Most of the girls wrote about their most recent field trip, which was visiting the chocolate factory downtown. We put on some music and some of them had fun dancing, singing and showing their talents to one another. We than had snacks which included, chips, flavoured popcorn, pizza, onion rings and wedges. We topped it off with soft drinks and cookies. We are thankful all the ...

This week the Boys II Men crew had a very hectic day for the program. They started by finishing the audio project for the radio PSAs that they had started on the previous weeks. Andrew helped them accomplish this by taking them to the radio studio booth. The audio project, themed masculinity, was combined with video clips, music sound clips, and collective interviews from the youths of the Boys II Men program. There was great enthusiasm in the faces of the boys after walking in the radio room, knowing that they were being interviewed, and recorded about the issues of ‘masculinity’. This gave them a sense of empowerment as they feel that their opinion and choices matter while doing the radio PSAs. Some of the boys picked a role model that they felt was a strong, powerful masculine man. Their choices differed from sports athlete like Derrick Rose to political leaders like Martin Luther king and Mahatma Gandhi. Later on Rob Perry from the Salvation Army came to visit with the kids. Does ...

A lot of pumped up action once again today with the Boys To Men crew. We decided to play a challenge activity game that involved coordination and teamwork. We called this game the “Balloon Toss”. In this game we used balloons and filled it with water and then, the boys were supposed to pair up with someone and form a line parallel across their teammate. Then they toss the balloon with water to their team partner. The partner then will try and catch the balloon and prevent it from dropping onto the ground so it won’t burst and explode. The team that drops and let the balloon burst will be out. The last team standing without dropping the balloon will be the prizewinner. Natnael and Noor were the last remaining team so they won the chocolate box prize. After that, we took the show indoors and had some nachos and dips and some bruschetta bread for the snack break. Andrew took over after the snack break and assigned the boys some tasks for a radio PSA with regards to the theme of mascul...

This week all the boys got ready and got all pumped up to go to the AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario). Surprisingly, there were more boys that had shown up for this trip than usual. There are no words to describe how the boys felt on having the experience to see the greats, the painters, the sculptors, and artists. When we arrived we were fortunate enough to meet an elderly lady that took us around the Art Gallery. She was more than kind enough to show us bits and pieces of the works of Picasso. There was an exhibition show for Picasso that day but we were not allowed to go view most of his work, and the kids got disappointed. This is due to the fact that we had to pay an extra $5.50 for each person to upgrade our admission to see the show, but we had limited funds. Overall, the kids learned a lot about the painters and were very fascinated by their works and legacies. The boys were shocked in learning about the price value and worth of the paintings. They were inspired with the artworks a...

Luminato is an amazing festival of the arts. From June 8 to June 17 the stages, streets and communities of Toronto are illuminated with theatre, music, visual arts, fashion, literature and so much more. I was very happy that I got to participate in this one of a kind festival by joining the 3D Building Designs Program at Regent Park Focus. As many know, the community of Regent Park is going through a lot of revitalization which may last over the next few years or so. This program allowed us to create our own version of what we want in our community, and we were free to create whatever we wanted to. During the program we also got introduced to Google Sketch Up, the 3D software that we used during this program. At first I thought that it was very difficult to use Sketch Up but in the end I got the hang of it. Overall this program was a lot of fun. I got to meet new people, do new things, and have a great time. I definitely recommend this program to others and I wish to participate in it...

Boys to Men May 16, 2012 Today, we were very lucky because we had 7 of the boys attend our program.  Even though some of them came in a bit later, we managed to meet up at the playground of Duke of York.  We played a game similar dodge ball.  We had 2 teams and a pylon for each of the players.  The pylons were lined up in 2 roles, opposing each other, as there were 2 teams.The goal of the game was to knock out all the opposing team’s pylons, with either one of the 2 balls, while keeping your own pylons erect.  We managed to play around 3 games with 3 staff members.   This game taught the boys a lot about teamwork and strategy.  Afterword, we played a few games of tag and manhunt with the kids.  We thought it was important for the boys to be physically active, to promote health and wellbeing.  At 5:15 pm, we went for a snack break at Regent Park Focus; we had tuna fish sandwiches and no turkey, because it wasn’t considered to be ha...