Regent Park Focus

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 ...

Regent Park Focus is partnering with the Youth, Arts, and Engagement Program at the University of Toronto to produce a media product that is based on the community. This is the seventh session. This session began with a skype call from a representative from SAALT (South Asian Americans Leading Together),  Lakshmi Sridaran, who talked about what the organization does and why they were created. SAALT is a non-profit organization that fights for the rights of South Asians in America. She then talked about the Christchurch Mosque Shootings and asked the group if they had anything they would like to talk about in regards to that. There was conversation around islamophobia, double standards, gun control, etc. After this conversation Lakshmi talked a little bit about DACA ( Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals ), DAPA ( Deferred Action for Parents of Americans ), and the Muslim ban.  After this conversation, the participants got into their groups and continued...

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 ...

Regent Park Focus is partnering with the Youth, Arts, and Engagement Program at the University of Toronto to produce a media product that is based on the community. This is the sixth session. At the start of the session Ad it i, the professor and coordinator of the collaboration gave a quick run through of what was to come during the next couple of weeks. The groups were then given time to work on their pieces, many choosing to go outside to film/take pictures.  Then, an icebreaker game was conducted where everyone got into a circle and would pick someone to ask a question to, this person would then pick someone else and ask them a question, this would continue until someone froze or repeated a question already asked. Sumeya ended up the winner! After the game, the UofT students and the girls continued working on their projects. The groups came up with names, these being: The On Air Police, Remembering Regent, Social Fixers, Space Jammers, and the Legacy Leavers. The ...

This session the girls recreated the pictures of empowering people they had chose last week. Some of the girls decided to work indoors while others asked to walk up to the lobby to take pictures in natural sunlight. They were asked to keep lighting in mind when taking the pictures so the mood stays similar to those in the original. Some of the pictures taken are shown below: These pictures will later be edited by the girls. Amna Quaid Azam

Catch Da Flava talks about New Zealand Shooting  On March 19th, 2019, Catch Da Flava youth expanded on the tragic mosque shooting which occurred on March 15th, 2019. Our hosts for the show were Kylie, Jessica and Meredith. Before they started the show, they gave a warning to their listeners because of the graphic content that was exposed on the show. They incorporated a series of videos, songs, and articles to help to spread awareness on gun violence and to elaborate more on the shooting that occurred. They focused more on the changes implemented post-shooting to put more emphasis on the more positive aspect of things. For instance, New Zealand banned any leisure weapons that people may have in their homes. Most people have been more than happy to adjust to the new law as this tragedy affected everyone in New Zealand. Also, their Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern has stated that their government will take care of all costs for each funeral and any other future assistanc...

On March 15th, the Little Divas program came back together to start a new thematic exploration. This week, we would begin to explore Indigenous history and issues. To start the day as we always do, we gave the girls the opportunity to do an ice breaker discussion session. We actually had two ice breaker questions today. The first asked the girls to reflect on how they felt about the dance sessions that they had been doing the previous two weeks, and how they felt about themselves after they got to film the dance in the green screen studio. This served as a great opportunity for the girls to express how much they enjoyed creating and filming the dance, and also as a way to solidify the themes we were exploring with the dance sessions - body positivity, self-confidence, and varied ideas of what is "beautiful". After we reflected on and wrapped up our discussion about the dance sessions, we asked the girls another ice breaker question, which was, "If you could hav...

Catch Da Flava held another show on March 12 th 2019! This time around, our hosts Shejuanah, Thalia, Kylie, and Meredith held a discussion about the Black Lives Matter movement. Our hosts started off by defining the movement (“a member led organization with missions to build local power and to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities”) and its origins. Intending to hold protests and speak out against issues like police brutality and racial profiling, the movement ignited after the murder of 17-year old Trayvon Martin, committed by George Zimmerman, and was further emboldened following the murder of Michael Brown, at the hands of police officer Darren Wilson. Both perpetrators were let off. Our hosts take some time to confirm that these incidents are not purely circumstantial and that racialized individuals in the United States, particularly unarmed black men, are statistically twice as likely to be shot by police.   They also discuss the prevale...