Boys to Men May 16, 2012

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 halal meat for some of the Muslim participants.  They told me that fish was ok because fish out of water needed no prayers for slaughter.  There were also some nachos with salsa.  After the break, we had a chance use some of our media equipment, with the help of Eman.   The boys each made a poster to recap what they learned in the program, and the benefits that they acquired, with the use of words and pictures.  After around 20 minutes of hard work and creativity from the boys, each boy presented their posters.  Eman did the filming of the presentations.  The boys were quite creative in their imitations of news reporters.   Some of them would say something, such as:  “reporting from Regent Park Focus” at the beginning of there presentations.   They were able to regurgitate some of the information we taught them about masculinity, bullying, and some of the information presented by public speaker Dainty.