Regent Park Focus

This was the last sessions the Divas will be attending until fall. The session started out with a couple of games the girls played together. Some examples of the games the girls played included: charades, interview, riddles, and more.  The girls also decided they wanted to host a dance competition. We then had a pizza party and talked about their plans for the summer. Seeing these girls grow and become aware of issues and the power they have has been amazing, they are very excited for the sessions to start again in October. When they had first arrived in the program they seemed very shy and remained fairly quiet, now it's clear to see how their level of confidence has gone up and many of them mentioned that it has helped them at school. Thank you for this amazing year!

 The session on the 16th of May was used as a round table discussion to talk about the girls' opinion about the program so far. After starting with a quick game, the girls started mentioning things they liked and things they would like improved about the program. They then completed their evaluations and started talking about things they would want to learn in future sessions. On the 23rd, the girls went back to taking pictures, this time they were given even more control of how they wanted it to come out and therefore, they spent a long time situating themselves in places where the sun hit them the way they wanted it to. They also played around a lot with their surroundings finding creative ways to take pictures. The pictures are shown below: \

This session the girls worked on creating letters they would write to their future selves. This got them really thinking about their future and what they would like to do.  This somewhat stressed the girls out because they suddenly felt pressured to have their life and future figured out. After some discussion, they felt much more comfortable leaving things unplanned and many stuck to little life lessons they wanted to state. Something the girls each agreed with was that no matter what, they needed to stick together.  The purpose of this activity was for the girls to find values and characteristics of themselves that they would like to keep with them even when they got older. Many talked about positivity and bouncing back from negativity.  While writing this and brainstorming the girls also found a way to pass time by doing riddles, they seemed to know a lot and had a few laughs trying to solve them together.  The girls also mentioned taking a vid...

For this edition of Health Talks Youth Radio, we talked about the movie "Remember the Titans" and how the power of sports can really help change a community for the better by applying the principles of the game to interpersonal relationships. “Remember the Titans” is about the first football team that integrated black and white students in Virginia. The movie shows that through sports and in this case, football, working as a sports team helped teach students how to unite not just as team players, but as a human collective. It shows how a sports team really did change humanity for the better. A few of the questions asked during the show were: In the beginning we see a team that’s all white, and then cuts to when segregation is being lifted and they hire a Black head coach, so how did you think it would work out did you predict it would work out pretty much the way it did or did you have another idea in mind? What are your thoughts? How do you think the little girl who ...

This week, Chris Leonard was our special guest speaker. Chris came in and facilitated a workshop about resiliency. Chris talked to the girls about the different ways in which they can go about protecting themselves and bouncing back from tough times and adversity. Chris also spoke to the girls about the benefits that came with a healthy amount of confidence and positive attitude. The girls contributed to the conversation by talking about the experiences they’ve had thus far. Some of the girls in the group spoke about friends who had low resiliency and how they would benefit from programs like the Diva Girls, especially when it came to workshops like this particular one. These conversations led to stories about how some of the girls were able to help their friends through personal hardships and when you have resiliency you are able and strong enough (both mentally and emotionally) to help those around you. With that said, you should also surround yourself with trusting and supporti...

The ladies in the Diva Girls program had a special guest speaker this week; Chris Leonard, an expert in the benefits of healthy resiliency spoke to the girls about confidence and self-love. The girls also had the chance to share their feelings and experiences with Chris who in turn gave them advice on how to deal with the pressures and challenges of everyday life. The following are journal entries from a few of the Diva Girls: Resiliency is when you bounce back from hard times, have self-confidence and love yourself. –Ishmahan This week at the diva girls we had Chris come in, she works in the health center and she deals with people who struggle with things that stress people. She taught us what resiliency is and how you can recover from not being resilient and how to stand up or help someone who can’t seem to recover by themselves. Chris also made me realize how resilient I am. –Fazeela Today we focused on resiliency. We talked about what it means to bounce back from a...

Today the Boys2Men group was very active physical as well as cognitively in there thinking on the topic on Resiliency. They learn that resiliency is the social academic competence, despite exposure to severe stress. It is important for these young boys to develop this skill at an early age to build up the ability to solve problems, being self-motivation, self-awareness, assertiveness, a sense of duty to self and others, and the capacity for reflection and meaning making. The facilitator discussed life skills and self-control in coping with physical impulses such as anger, in a school setting based on school lifestyle in dealing with daily challenges. She also brought some balloons and asked the youth to blow air into the balloon and match it with how resilient they are and what scenarios they had shown resiliency. Some of the boys showed how big and massive their balloon was to match their resiliency levels, others showed in the medium average. They were asked what kind of strategie...

Summer is here! What does that mean? The 2010 Regent Park Focus Youth Media Arts Summer Program has launched. This year participants of the Regent Park Focus Summer program have many different programs for children and youth to join. The main theme of our work in the summer is on Life Skills Development and Youth Mental Health, which also includes other social issues effecting youth such as; peer pressure, substance abuse, racism, discrimination, the environment and so much more. Each day we offer a series of two hour workshops. The goal of each of the workshops is to create an arts project that is based on resiliency skills such as; leadership, team work, goal setting, project-task management and conflict resolution and explores issues related to youth mental health. First off, every Monday afternoons we have a group of Brown high school placement students who are doing a placement at George Brown College. These students are working on an audio play and producing their very own ra...