Regent Park Focus

Regent Park filmed an episode of Interfaith Dialogue. This episode of interfaith dialogue was about the Muslim religion. The guest was a student who is currently taking the Chaplin program at the University of Toronto. During the interview, the topics that were touched on were: What does Chaplaincy mean to you? How do you see yourself as a Muslim? How do you practice your religion? The production team consisted of the Director (Horace) The Host (Kamal), Switcher (Joanne) and Camera (Omar, Isaac, Tyrone). dialogue

Inspired by HiveNYC's Radio Rookies, Regent Park Focus and Facing History are collaborating to produce youth-led internet radio series, school curriculum guide, audiovisual slideshows using web-maker tools, and a project documentary. Working with 5 different TDSB high schools the project will be contributed by 20 students in the first phase. Today marks the first day of the RadioZilla Project.We spent most of the day doing introductions and tours of the Regent Park Focus space, TV studio and radio studios. We also presented some examples of radio documentaries produced by HiveNYC's Radio Rookies to give them a better idea of the project and how to incorporate visual theme with their audio. Funding for this project was provided by the Ontario Trillium Foundation and Mozilla Hive Toronto.

As part of my involvement in the RDYL “Common Grounds Media Project” at Regent Park Focus Youth Media Arts Centre (RPF) I worked on producing an interview. The theme of the interview was pluralism, and I was given much freedom in deciding on which issue I would specifically focus on. RPF offered several options, however, the one I found especially interesting was the issue of violence against Muslim women. I choose this topic because I felt it would have the benefit of touching on not only themes of religious diversity, but would also speak to a very serious social issue. I was fortunate enough to be able to conduct an interview with Sahar Zaidi. The following is some background information on her. Sahar holds a Masters in Public Administration from the Schulich School of Business (2012), a Masters in Business Administration from the American University of Sharjah (2010), and a BS in Accounting from Purdue University (2004). She has had over 4 years of experience in leadersh...

April 9th, 2014 marked Pink Shirt Day for Bully Free Alberta, a campaign to raise awareness about bullying. In honor of this, we decided to screen the documentary, “Bully” directed by Sundance and Emmy-award winning filmmaker Lee Hirsh. The film follows the lives of five students who face bullying on a daily basis. A glimpse into the classroom, the home and the principles office, this documentary offers insight into the cruel world of bullied children. This film examines the consequences of bullying and shines a light on how we need to change in the way we deal with bullying as children, teachers, parents and society as a whole. After the screening of “Bully”, we had a discussion about the film and many of the youth were very taken back by how much bullying is still going on and how much even just name-calling can affect someone. We discussed the different types of bullying and how even joking around can be very hurtful to people. The youth discussed how bullying has gone to a...

I joined Camilla, Aidan, Omar and our guest Mona. Our topic of discussion was line 9. Line 9 is a 30-year-old cement based pipeline running between Montreal and Sarnia. During our discussion we covered the health risks involved and also how it affects not only our water system but also our airways. We also debated both the negative and positive aspects as one of the panel members was arguing that even though there are negative aspects, there is also a positive side for it being built.  - Mark