Regent Park Focus

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 ...

On Tuesday November 27th, Radio Regent's Catch da Flava youth radio show explored the topic of mental health and mental illness. We were fortunate enough to have guest Mike Stroh from mental health organization Starts With Me on the show with us as a guest. Mike answered a number of great questions from the youth and had some important and thought-provoking discussions with us about mental health and mental illness. For more information about Mike's work and Starts With Me, visit  https://startswithme.ca/ We started off the show the way we usually do when we are introducing the topic or issue for the day's episode, which is to provide a definition or general explanation of the main concept. Mike made the important distinction between the terms "mental health" and "mental illness" for us and our listeners. The youth started the discussion off by asking Mike to talk about some of the most common forms of mental illness, especially for youth in part...

Children of parents going through a divorce can experience a lot of stress and anxiety. One of our radio hosts, Sean talked about his personal experience as a child of divorcing parents and how difficult it was for him. Usually kids don’t understand what their parents are going through and the impact of parents separating and divorcing can really affect their daily life. We talked about how it affected Sean’s life. Luckily kids are resilient. Despite his parents divorcing, Sean feels positive about his life. Although it may be hard, Sean encourages kids to try to be positive about the situation even though it may be hard for a young person to cope when their parents are going through a divorce. Divorce children may feel a sense of rejection or anger which can lead them to doing the wrong things in life. Sean believes that how children react to divorce depends a lot on how the family handles the situation. In Sean’s mind it’s a fifty fifty situation. “It can end up bad or end up...


For Catch Da Flava radio show, Sean and I talked about mental illness and some of the research related to the cause of mental illness. We talked about how sleep can affect children who are diagnose with mental illness at a young age. I myself can relate since I was diagnosis with bipolar and depression at the age of twelve and lack of sleep definitely affected my episodes. Without proper sleep it felt like I was never going to recover and because I was also tired never knew when I was normal. I wasn’t the only one with an illness. Sean also struggling with a mental illness. In his case it was anxieties that he was suffering from. It’s not always easy to recover from an illness that will never go away or will always be a part of who you are. Today I still battle bipolar and depression. Luckily I have the help and support from positive people that are in my life, which is why I won’t quit the battle. Having a mental illness isn’t easy to cope with. I have learn to be positive by surr...

Catch Da Flava Blog - July 31, 2018 This week on Catch Da Flava hosts Nate and Diamond talked about the art of bouncing back with health talk panelists. We discussed the ways each of us copes when life's situations become over barring and knocks you down; whether that be exercising, listening to music, taking a hot shower or sleeping; all these activities help us stray from a bad state of mind to help us stay positive. Life can be a complex journey with many ups and downs. It’s filled with both challenges and accomplishments. However, when we go through challenging phases, we often dwell more on the bad experiences and end up self-loathing and judgemental. Pitfalls are a part of life, whether we like it or not and the health talk panellist believe that having support systems to help cope with life's hurdles help with one’s resilience. Furthermore, we bounced around a few ideas about how changing the way you think could make you more resilient as well as the significan...

Health Talks on Catch da Flava Levi, Valentina, Divine, Matthew July 30th Last week our group hosted a radio show for Health Talks on Catch da Flava Radio. We discussed our experiences with video games and the reasons behind the newly classified mental condition issued by the World Health Organization. Based on the panel, our guests concluded in disagreement to the idea of the mental disorder classification. Overall we thought that the amount of gaming time could and should be restricted and controlled by the game developers to prevent negative connotations towards gaming. We did a great job of keeping the conversation going with very little pauses in dialogue. The discussion topics and examples were engaging and kept the show interesting throughout. One thing we could have done differently is bring in some factual information to back up our opinions within the debate. For example, we could have listed percentages of players on the games we discussed and even people that have b...

For this edition of Health Talks Youth Radio, we had our wonderful panel discussion with our youth participants discussing how they navigated through school stress while school was in. We chatted about the issue only to celebrate that it’s finally over. Some of the questions we explored were: What’s a way school stress has affected you emotionally? I’m talking about how it has made you feel, the anxiety, the sorrow, the anger, the frustration. What’s the worst and best emotions from the school term for you? So how’s school stress affected you psychologically? This can be something like how it makes you doubt your ability to finish assignments, to do well in exams- all that. Or what about some stories you heard from friends and classmates? Sometimes, because the body and mind are connected, we can have physical symptoms from school stress. How has school stressed you out- did you have to have all-nighters, difficulty sleeping because of worry, physical weakness trying to keep ...

For our June 19th episode of Catch da Flava Youth Radio, we shared a pre-recorded clip for our first half. Interviewing a few youth participants, we asked them a few questions when it comes to issues of eating habits. Eating habits are an important topic for youth to consider because it is usually the time when people start to develop eating disorders so understanding how they eat and their views of healthy eating habits is important to know how we can monitor our own views of eating. When it comes to healthy eating, youth tend to have similar ideals and definitions on what are healthy eating habits and healthy foods. The participants seem to enjoy talking about their favourite junk food often, having very clear and very specific junk foods to highlight. Generally, it seems that our youth participants are quite healthy and eat fairly balanced. There were a few questions asked, which include: 1. Do you consider your eating habits “healthy”? What’s your definition of healthy eat...

For our June 19th episode of Health Talks Youth Radio, we had our youth panel discussion to talk about our eating habits and how we enjoy eating. We explore the different ways we eat, especially given our diverse backgrounds and perspectives. We come from different cultures, different food preferences, and have different relationships to food. We try to explore how our food habits are the same and how they are different through our panel discussion. Some of the questions we addressed were: We’re all coming from different cultures and upbringing? What’s your favourite cultural food from your own culture? Can you describe how it tastes and how it’s prepared? What’s your favourite food in general? Why? What’s your favourite dessert and why? What’s the worst food dish you’ve ever heard of, and what was it? What’s an amazing food dish you’ve heard of and what is it? An amazing restaurant or franchise you want to visit? We chatted a lot more about different foods and our shar...

For this episode of Health Talks Youth Radio, Diamond hosts our panel discussion about how connected we’ve become in this digital world, and how it takes a toll on our mental health. Experts call sitting the new smoking, as people have become addicted to nothing- and especially through hours and hour of nothing. Talking about how we’ve become a culture of social media consumers, we see how youth are now wasting a lot of time consuming meme after meme the same way we used to consume TV show after TV show. Ranging from twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, the three big social media platforms, they chat a lot about how it has become such a norm and fixture in our ordinary lives. Diamond asked a few questions of our youth panel including if they thought social media can affect our mental health and how, how much is too much social media usage, how has the acceleration of the internet affected social media consumption, what are some warnings about social media addiction, and th...

For this edition of Health Talks Youth Radio, host Diamond chatted about the importance of Indigenous Cultural Awareness with our youth panel. In introducing the topic, Diamond mentions that a person’s cultural background has a powerful influence on their personal development because as they interact and communicate with others, they draw from their cultural beliefs and values learned from birth. This is especially important to understand the different cultural perspectives people are coming from, especially the Indigenous community. According to a recent statistic, the number of the Indigenous population is estimated to rise to between 1.7 million and 2.2 million by 2031, or between 4.0% and 5.3% of the total population. With the Indigenous community ranging into the millions, chances are we will meet at least one Indigenous person in our life, which means it’s worthwhile to understand where they are coming from, their social-psychological background, so we can better commun...

For this episode of Health Talks Youth Radio, host Travis walked us through a discussion on the Disney favourite “The Mighty Ducks”. About a group of kids in a local community who love to play hockey, they are the underdogs as they don’t find a lot of success in their team. Their last coach passed away and even when he was alive, he wasn't helping them out all that much. They since played for fun and never did anything serious. One day, a limousine pulls up where the kids are playing and stops all of them instantly. Out steps a man in a suit and a long trench coat, who tells them that his name is Gordon Bombay and he's the new coach. He's going through some issues at work and was told by his boss that he has to give back to the community and learn about teamwork- plus he hates kids. Through the interaction with the new coach and the untamed team, we see how both sides transform from the experience. Discussing the movie, we wonder if Gordon has what it takes...

For this episode of Health Talks Radio, we interviewed some youth participants about their experience with drugs. We asked them five questions, which were about what they knew about recreational drugs, if they or someone they knew used them, would they consider using them, if they used them then why, and what new drugs have they heard about. Overall, the youth participants didn’t seem to have much knowledge or information when it comes to drug use and didn’t seem to have much of an interest in participating in drug use. The most popular recreational drug the youth knew about was marijuana. Some just knew that many people use it, the smell and use of it, but one youth participant claims it is not a recreational drug but an “herb” because it comes from a plant, so is more natural than most recreational drugs and is often utilized for medical purposes. The youth participants had interesting responses to the questions, but most didn’t seem to have any special interest in pur...

For this edition of Health Talks Radio, we celebrated Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week in Ontario by talking about the power of storytelling when it comes to dealing with issues of mental health. Host Diamond introduced the topic and welcomed our youth panelists to discuss the issues and the power of storytelling when it comes to dealing with our personal mental health concerns. Talking to our panelists, it’s clear they have dealt with their own struggles and that being able to talk about it has helped heal them. One of our panelists discussed that when she was young, she was diagnosed with bipolar and her parents immediately warned her not to discuss the diagnosis, to keep it quiet from everyone to which she felt as if she “had to wear a mask” around everyone, not being able to share her personal narrative. Another panelist discussed how talking about their personal journey has helped them heal and accept themselves as all they are. Identifying as gay, when they finally shared...

For the May 8th edition of Catch da Flava Youth Radio, we celebrated Children’s Mental Health Week as host Diamond sat down with Mike Stroh who is the creator of organization the mental health awareness organization “Starts With Me”. Discussing the significance of storytelling when it comes to issues of mental health, Mike’s organization looks to share personal stories of mental health struggles and triumph to help others heal. In his personal journey of development, Mike smoked marijuana almost everyday from age thirteen all the way to thirty, having no idea he was causing himself severe damage because there were rarely any stories shared about the negative side effects of substance use. Consequently, Mike’s been motivated to become a motivational speaker to talk about his personal journey in understanding what he went through in hopes others can find themselves in his tale and be motivated themselves to share their tale. In understanding the power of storytelling, Mike believes tha...

Date: May 7 th , 2018 Hosts : Jeance & Seymouria Guests : Professor Gordon Cleveland (UTSC); Laural Rothman (Ontario Coalition for Better Childcare) Topic : Affordable Childcare With the Ontario provincial election drawing closer, the Powerful by Nature team covered a topic close to our hearts : Affordable Childcare. Our hosts Seymouria and Jeneace led a powerful conversation with special guests Professor Gordon Cleveland, whose research focuses on the economics of early childhood and childcare policy, and Laurel Rothman from the Ontario Coalition for Better Childcare. Breaking down everything from the high costs of childcare in Ontario and Toronto to the three provincial party childcare platforms, our two guests gave us a roadmap for making childcare affordable and accessible for all, and (spoiler alert) if there was governmental will, there would be a way! Listen to this very special episode below and, if affordable childcare matters to you, remembe...

For our May 3rd edition of Health Talks Youth Radio, host Travis introduced our show by discussing the movie we would explore, which is the new 2010 Karate Kid starring Jayden Smith, son of the famous Will Smith, and the famous martial artist Jacky Chan. Set in China, the movie explores how a young boy who recently lost his father travels with his mother to China after the economic downturn in Detroit makes it too difficult to live in their homeland. Upon arriving to China, young Dre (played by Jayden Smith) finds himself a target of a group of young bullies, facing racism and discrimination. Discovering a love of martial arts, he finds that his bullies practice is and soon employs the assistance of the maintenance worker in his building who has hidden talents in martial arts (played by Jackie Chan). In discovering his inner strength, Dre overcomes his inner demons and outer demons and wins the respect and regard of his adversaries and finds a new home in China. Discussing thi...

For this edition of Health Talks Radio, we extended our conversation about the Indigenous community and discussed issues on how to support our Indigenous community in the struggles they face that range from emotional, psychological, and even around food scarcity and water supplies. Hosted by Gisela, we talked about how the Indigenous community continues to face struggles, such as the issue with water scarcity. In many reserves, the Indigenous community still has to rely on bringing in bottled water for everyday use including cooking, cleaning, drinking, and bathing. Water is so polluted and undrinkable and unhealthy for the community that they have to search outward for their solution. Growing up in these conditions, it would be easy for youth to think that this is normal and not realize that the resources are not as adequate as most developed communities, affecting their emotional and psychological health. Other topics we explored is the ways in which the Indigenous community ...

For this episode of Health Talks Youth Radio, Diamond talks to our panel about youth homelessness. We talked about what defines “homelessness” for us and our shared experience meeting people facing homelessness. We talked about how we feel compassion for the people on the streets and observe how there are so many more living on the streets downtown than in suburban areas like Scarborough. Travis was curious to understand why this was an occurrence as he feels there are much more resources downtown to help the homeless than in suburban areas. Gisela points out a very important point which is the term “hidden homelessness” in which people may be homeless but “couch surf” or stay in recreation centres and so they are not visible. Running down our understanding of homelessness, we discovered that there are different terms for homelessness such as chronic, transitional, and episodic. Chronic means a person has been homeless for an extended period of time, the traditional homelessnes...

For our April 24th edition of Catch da Flava Youth Radio, host Diamond Bailey sat down and chatted to representative of Covenant House Brendan Halama. We learned that Covenant House is a worldwide organization, with organizations and programs in Canada, America, and even abroad. Covenant House serves youth by giving them a safe space to live if they find themselves homeless, showing them respect and unconditional love. Their location in Toronto is just downtown by Ryerson University and Dundas Square, at 20 Gerrard St. E. Youth can drop in and be assisted, given shelter and space to leave their belongings. In discussing the winter time, we understand that homelessness can be hard for youth and they still have support at Covenant House. It is really a judgment free space for youth. Brendan works with Covenant House and has a great deal of experience helping youth and mentions that some youth can not be assisted through Covenant House such as youth under 16 because they a...