Regent Park Focus

Divas Media Group Blog Last week the Divas Media Group met and the ladies had Muna from Gashanti Unity guest speak. The ladies participated in a “Bingo” activity based on Black History Month. The ladies learned new terms and took turns facilitating the activity. Later, the ladies along with Muna had a group discussion on how their social identities would be different if black people were not granted civil rights. The girls reflected on their lives and identified privileges that they have that were not granted to females and black people during the slave trade. At the end of the meeting, the ladies spoke with Muna about shadeism and its origin. The ladies are excited to watch the short documentary Shadeism in the next couple of weeks. By: Tusma Sulieman Date: February 25, 2016

Last Week, here at Regent Park Focus we had seven students come from the University of Toronto – involved in the Alternative Reading Week Program. These students participated in the collaboration for three days; each day different tasks were assigned to the students. On day one we welcomed the students to the space by introducing them to the two programs: RPTV and Radio Regent. They were shown what happens behind the close doors in terms of production. After the walk through we had an icebreaker called snowball to get better acquainted with each other. After the warm up, we went through the agenda for the day. On the same day we had the students create and research topics related to community media access, they were told that this material would be used on Catch Da Flava, and that they also would be hosting the segment for that week. It went GREAT and the students were complete naturals at hosting their own radio segment. On the second day, we distributed pre-made poster of each of ou...

On tonight’s catch da flava, we talked about one of the biggest issues that impact everyone young and old. Online harassment is one of the most serious types of bullying in the entire world. It has lead to many young teens taking their own lives as well as taking the lives of others on a large scale (school shootings). Online Harassment or cyber bullying is not the same as face-to-face bullying. Online Harassment opens up the door for literally everyone in the world with access to the Internet, to either be bullies or heroes. The Internet is a place for people to express themselves and their thoughts but obviously everyone will not agree with everyone else. It is a place for people to express their right to freedom of speech which extends to the internet world however at times, freedom of speech allows people to say the nastiest things imaginable without facing much prosecution other than that of the internet world. Recently employers have been making it a habit to filter out cyber b...

Last week, the girls from the Diva Media Group had to concentrate on writing a journal entry in honor of black history month. The girls had the choice to write either about their favorite black history role model or why black history is important to them. This exercise allowed the girls to reflect upon historic facts and the significance of black leaders that have positively influenced the movement of human rights for minorities. The ladies participated in a brief discussion to share their thoughts and views about this revolutionary month. The diva’s underlined some stimulating opinions about history and included some thoughts on inspirational leaders such as Martin Luther King. Additionally, the ladies also participated in a Regent Park Focus meeting about the progression of the Mobile Media Bike, in which two special guests were invite to share their ideas and experiences working with media mobility on bicycles. By: Anne-Julie Guerrier

On tonight’s Catch da Flava, we talked about the crisis currently going on in Toronto and the GTA. It has only been a month since the New Year and there have already been 12 homicides with the youngest victim being a 17-year-old boy. It is frightening that there have been this many homicides so early into the year. What could be causing this? One CBC article talks about the weather and how it may be to blame. This isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds, since more people are outside on the streets when it is warm outside. Speaking of weather, Super Bowl 50 was hot this year. Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos defeated Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers 24-10; It was a good day for most fans. However what really caught fire was Beyoncé’s halftime performance. The two previous performances by Bruno Mars and Coldplay were pretty solid, however Beyoncé caught the world’s attention. She performed her newest song called “Formation” and the song basically highlighted the issues many black p...