Regent Park Focus

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...

This session the Little Divas had a showcase and the older Divas were invited to watch! While the Little Divas were getting ready the older Divas and I talked about the UofT Showcase and how they felt it turned out at the end. We then talked about the sessions leading up to it and how everyone's experience went throughout it.   Soon after, we were all invited into the room the showcase was happening at and the Little Divas talked about the work they created and we were able to listen to a song the girls had created and then watched a dance they came up with together which had the message of empowerment implemented into it. Some of the pieces the girls worked on was a wall titled "Black Girl Magic", which included letters the girls had created to people they think embody Black Girl Magic. There was also a section titled The Future which included Time Capsules the girls created. More work created was on advertising, self-portraits, Taking back Stereotypes...

These sessions the girls used to complete their photography projects. The first session was used to learn about editing images with the guest artist Sydonnae. She then showed the girls their pieces compared to the ones they picked during the first session. The girls then said bye to Sydonnae and the session ended.  Some of the Final pictures are shown below, they will be included as part of the showcase.   Upon return to Focus the following Friday (March 29th) the girls went out around the community to take pictures. Before leaving they were asked to pick themes they wanted their photography to be about. They then got into groups and we headed out. The themes picked were: happiness, vacation, and fashion/modern. These pictures taken are shown below, they will be included as part of the showcase. Amna Quaid Azam

On February 22nd, we started a new theme and exploration which could be aptly titled, Flawless! The next two sessions would be about recognizing different kinds of beauty, body positivity, and self-confidence! The girls all really like Beyoncé, so we decided to take a cue from her song "Flawless" to tie everything together for this theme. We started this session off as usual with an ice-breaker discussion questions for the girls. We asked them to share their favourite thing about themselves and why, and their answers were both non-physical attributes about themselves and also particular aspects of their physical appearance. I was really glad to see that the girls did not immediately think only of physical characteristics when asked this question, but also of their personalities! We also played a brief ice-breaker game called Perfect Square/Circle, where the girls had to take a string with the ends tied together, and work together in teams of two to untangle the string ...

On February 15th, just after Valentine's Day, the Little Divas came back together to continue their exploration of love and healthy relationships. We didn't expressly focus on or relate the content to Valentine's Day in particular, but the themes we were dealing with were quite timely nonetheless.  For our ice-breaker discussion question to start the day's session off, we asked the girls to share what they would do if they could become invisible, but only for the next 15 minutes. This definitely got their creativity warmed up, but it was also interesting to see the challenge of coming up with something that they could achieve in 15 minutes. After all, they were only given invisibility, not super-human speed or the ability to fly! The girls really had a good time with the electronic version of charades that we played before, so we used that as our ice-breaker game again this week. It not only allows the girls to use their close connections with each other in order to...

On February 8th, the Little Divas girls' program came back together to wrap up the previous two weeks and start on with a new theme! As always, we start our session with an ice-breaker discussion question, and then an ice-breaker game. The discussion question for the girls today was: if you could ask a wild animal one question, what animal would you pick and what question would you ask it? The girls had some very creative and interesting answers. Our ice-breaker game for the day was Heads Up, which is an electronic version of charades! We played in teams, and with Heads Up you do charades as fast as you can for your team, with the aim of the team correctly guessing as many as you can in the allotted time. You could really see the connection the girls have with each other in this game, as they seemed to have an unspoken language of understanding between them without needing to speak very much at all, which worked very well for them with charades! Before we dove into the new them...

The Little Divas wrapped up the month of January with a look at the themes of self-acceptance and body positivity. On January 25th, the session started with an ice-breaker discussion activity that asked the girls to think about what the most important thing would be to bring with them if they moved to another planet. This made them think about things that they rely on and are important to them in their lives, and also got their creative juices flowing for the rest of the session! As another fun ice-breaker activity for the day, we played a "mix & meet" game with Skittles, where each colour of Skittle was given a specific category, and the girls had to share a piece of information about themselves that related to that category for each Skittle they had of that colour. For example, if the category for blue Skittles was "family", and for red Skittles it was "hobbies", and someone had two blue Skittles and one red, they would have to share two facts about ...

We are rested and ready to take on spring after our March Break Wellness week! The Diva’s spent their time at Focus with good food, good friends and a whole week centred on understanding and supporting our minds and bodies.  With winter finally melting it’s time for self-reflection and preparing for a new season. On Monday we started off by talking about the role anxiety plays in each of our lives and the healthiest and most effective ways to combat it before our evening programm ing with UofT. On Tuesday we took some much-needed R&R with our pajama themed Chocolate Fondue party! Fresh fruit, melted chocolate, and empowering chick flicks! This was one of the best days of our week! Wednesday we started are morning off right, yogurt parfaits and empowering self-talk. Just like we maintain our body’s health, it’s important to maintain your mental health. Making sure we talk to ourselves the way we talk to people we love, even when we’re stressed or ...

When the girls came back for their first Little Divas session of 2019 after the holiday break, we wanted to make sure we did a bit of a refresher about some of the concepts we introduced and explored in December before our time off. We asked the girls first to talk about their favourite things that they did or that happened over the holiday break. After we all got to recount the fun and memorable moments we had over the break, we played an ice breaker game called Teeth. In Teeth, we sat in a circle and each person is given an object to hold. We played with fake plastic fruit. On their turn, each person has to say the name of their fruit, and the fruits of the people to their left and right. The game gets its name from the fact that nobody can show their teeth at any point in the game, either during your turn when saying the fruit names, or if you might be laughing when anybody else is taking their turn. We had a great time with this game and laughed a lot - it was a really good ice b...

For the last two sessions of the Little Divas girls' program in December 2018, we began exploring the theme "love is love". We started into this theme by discussing the question "what is normal?" We thought "normal" is what people expect us to be or do, or what usually happens in a given situation. We also talked about what it means or feels like to not be normal - being weird or different, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long as it isn't hurting anyone! We went further into the concept of "normal" and thought about who decides what is "normal" and what is not, and where we get those ideas from. We talked about how the idea of "normal" is different for everyone, and in fact it's really just made up and perpetuated by people with some sort of power or influence in our society. That's also why the idea of what is "normal" is often different in different cultures and different parts of the wo...