Regent Park Focus

This week cohost Debra Scott talks to Jackie Porter about financial literacy, especially among women. They explore best practices, why it is important especially for women to be in control of their finances, and resources to seek in learning more about financial literacy. For the second half, Judy Pham shares an interview with local midwife Ayeshah Haque about why midwifery is a great option for pregnant women, and how alternatives beyond going to the hospital to give birth help empower women who are pregnant. Songs featured: 1) "She Works Hard For The Money" by Donna Summers 2) "Someday" by Britney Spears 3) "Blue" by Beyonce featuring Blue Ivy Carter

The Diva Girls Group Session 13: Poetry and Refresher & Editing December 22, 2017 When I watched 2017 slowly tick away into 2018, there was a certain irony there. I watched Christmas turn into New Year’s Eve on the brink of new things that could happen. New perspectives on things that have already happened in the year happened. This time of year was a time of pondering and reflection. Shannon Hale said it best. “I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shoveling sand into a box so that I can later build castles.” Writing is a way of reflection, a way of expression and with that self-expression, I learned that writing – for all the years I had been doing it – could shift in different ways that brought the writer freedom and room for new discoveries. Discovery was what I saw during the Poetry Refresher & Editing session of the Diva’s Program. The Divas came through to brainstorm what was the definition of a good mood. What made a poem i...

For this edition of Catch da Flava Youth radio show, Diamond hosted our panel discussion on youth homelessness with our youth panelists. Present for the panel discussion were Beverly, Erika, Joel, and Johanna. They all shared their perspective on what the causes for youth homelessness are, what they think about helping out when it comes to youth homelessness, and issues like laws that make it hard for youth that have no shelter, like fines against panhandling and laws against homelessness. Diamond suggests that though youth come into homelessness for different reasons, there are some specific factors that generally abide when it comes to their status such as coming from a broken home, experiencing negligence and abuse, or struggles with mental health. ​ Some of the questions posed for this panel discussion include asking panelists what their definition of homelessness is, its causes, why there is controversy around the topic, and their thoughts on the concept of homelessness being ...

For the first half of our December 19th edition of Catch da Flava Youth Radio, we started off with our Health Talks Radio segment with cohost Diamond. We welcomed guest Aamar Khwaja from Mod Garden to the show to talk about his new invention called Tiny Farms. Tiny Farms is still in the early stages of development, but looks to change the way we eat and promote healthier living by producing a product that grows fresh plants for consumers with urban lifestyles. Inspired by his own experience with chronic headaches and eczema, Aamar sought to cure himself by changing his eating habits, realizing it was all coming from deficiency in natural minerals that are often found in plants.​ Not only did he have to change the way he ate, but he realized the food system is “broken” that in the process of transporting food, a lot of minerals and vital nutrients gets lost in the vegetables and by the time it comes to the consumer, it barely has any nutrients. In creating these Tiny Farms,...

This week Kate counts us down through the years to celebrate music by women from different genres and decades, after much controversy last summer in the media over having such few women being recognized for their chart-topping hits. For the second half, Judy Pham chats with Geneviève Ramage about her experience watching the documentary A Better Man, which they both watched, to understand how their experiences were varied or alike, when it comes to the issue of gender-based violence.  Songs featured: 1) Piano Trio in G Minor by Clara Schumann 2) Up Above My Head by Sister Rosetta Tharpe 3) Gloria by Patti Smith 4) U.N.I.T.Y by Queen Latifah 5) California by Joni Mitchell 6) Still I Rise by Tupac Shakur 7) Baby Don't Cry (Keep Ya Head Up II) by Tupac Shakur

For this edition of Catch da Flava Youth Radio, co-host Diamond Bailey discussed the issue of net neutrality with our youth panel discussion, consisting of Beverly, Joel, and Johanna. Beverly expressed support for net neutrality, citing censorship as a major concern. Joel was overjoyed with the prospect of overturning net neutrality as he believes this will cause people to become detached from modern technology and talk to each other in person. He furthered express his disdain in the development of humanity, lamenting the loss of major entertainment product chains such as HMV and Blockbuster, to which Johanna expressed lackluster indifference. Net neutrality is the concept that believes internet service providers should treat all data on the internet the same. So all content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication should not be charged differently. Consequently, it is believed that internet service providers should not be able to charg...

For our December 12th show of Catch da Flava Youth Radio, co-hosts Beverly and Johanna started off with Health Talks Radio, welcoming guest Wil Carlos from a non profit dedicated to creating services for youth with mental health concerns called Young Ones. They offer youth that utilize their services immediate care with one counselor in each quadrant of the city. Young Ones is not offers no wait times, but all of their employees have experience with mental health concerns, so they can relate to youth that seek their services. They also have youth volunteers, so those who seek their services can identify to volunteers as well. All of this is made in part to encourage those who seek their services to feel comfortable. Both Beverly and Johanna shared their own journey dealing with mental health, and Wil shared his experience dealing with depression as a teenager and discussing when the first warning signs were for him and how others can observe warning signs in others or in themsel...

Date: December 11, 2017 Hosts: Shadae & Anny Guests: Steve Doherty & Elisa Traficante Topic: Youth Homelessness This week Shadae and Anny held a discussion on Youth Homelessness with our guests Steve Doherty, Executive Director at Youth without Shelter and Elisa Traficante, Director of Community Initiatives at Raising the Roof. The second half of the show, we spoke about the housing crisis in Toronto, some of the reasons why people and in particular youth become homeless and what we can do as a society to help break the cycle of homelessness. For the last part of the show, we had a discussion about the government’s role is to help and ensure more people are being housed. We discussed organizations that provide assistance to youth who are at risk of becoming homeless or who are homeless. Our music selection this week features holiday songs 1. Baby its cold outside – Michael Bublé and Idina Menzel 2. Jingle Bell Rock – Glee 3. Let It Snow! Let it Snow )- Fran...

IT’S A QUEER WORLD! All terms and definitions have been sourced from the 519 Community centre - www.the519.org/ "Crop tops are not Hot", new National Holidays includes FREE SHAWARMA and Islamophobia is a still a Hot Topic as students battle it out for their right to practice prayer inside the TDSB. All this and more inside Regent Parks Divas Group. While my evening started out with a lesson in the language of biomedics; scientists keep your strawberries fresher, longer, with silk fibroid protein and use jellyfish genes to differentiate cloned puppies for natural borns (yes they really used glow-in-the-dark toenails as the distinguishing factor). PETA anyone? The Divas took another turn, journeying into the heavy dialogue of gender and sexuality. Host and self-identified pansexual, L on dz o, took the time to address the topic  with an in depth look into the conflicts in finding love in same-sex relationships, using her poetry to ...

For this episode of Catch da Flava Youth Radio, we had our Health Talk Radio youth panel discussion and explored the issue of gender-based violence, as December 6th is the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women for Canadians, which remembers the 14 women killed on December 6, 1989, at L’Ecole Polytechnique. Host Erika shared with us she was born shortly after the tragic experience, because as a new mother and immigrant to Canada, her mother had witnessed the live footage of the incident, which induced labour causing Erika to be born premature. With how it can personally affect us in different mental and ​ physical ways, we talked about the effect of gender-based violence for individuals and communities. Our panelists talked about how different social components can make a certain community more vulnerability like Indigenous women, the LGBT community, and younger women, and why that is. They consider that these communities tend to have less resources for pro...

For our December 5th, 2017 Catch da Flava Radio Show, host Erika welcomed back Geneviève Ramage to finish up their last conversation from a previous show in November. Then she discussed the Immigrant Women’s Integration Program (IWIP) that is offered at the TD Centre for Learning with some audio clips of past participants and their experience in the program. Then we welcomed in studio former participant and current graduate Maria Arteaga. Maria talked about her experience in the program, how she learned useful life skills and her experience in adjusting to a different country, learning things you never had to consider like “layering” her clothes, and even the term “layering.” Maria currently works with the Toronto District School Board and teaches Spanish lessons at the TD Centre for Learning. She has shared about her unique experience from once being a student at the centre and now being a teacher. She has shared how the roles has changed the ways in which she responds to the class...

At Regent Park Focus throughout these weeks, Hopeton has imparted workshops imparted collaborative songwriting, writing help, harmonizing. Youth explored ideas, shared stories found commonalities with their peers, and converted these experiences into song form. That process generated a few original songs that the participants helped to mould from start to finish. The technical knowledge acquisitions that happened during some of these sessions were sampling from online audio sources, sampling instruments, learning the difference between generating sound from internal program sounds and external audio inputs, and synchronizing rhythms. Every participant got an introduction to basic music theory in order to input melodies with the piano keyboard as their input device. An understanding of why certain notes are "harmonic" vs. "dissonant" made their note selection to all the audio works more delightful to the ear. If melody hiccups were still made, the participant wa...