Blogs
Oct 16th, 2008 - 16:21:35 | Mai
feedTrip Report: Whitehorse, Yukon (Sept. 23-28, 2008)
What does a small community like Whitehorse offer?
What can you get in a small community like Whitehorse that you cannot get in Toronto? Well, a very warm sense of belonging exists. The territory itself is 30,000 with 23,000 living in the capital. In addition, you get encouragement for being an artist no matter what level of talent you possess.
The first few days I integrated myself into community activities and hang outs by spending a lot of time at BYTE (Bringing Youth Towards Equality), a youth organization that encourages youth initiatives in the community. They are well known by the community, including amongst teachers. Julie Diyen, our Yukon Youth Engagement Coordinator is FANTASTIC.
Interestingly, there is a growing arts movement in Whitehorse and I spent a lot of time at the local Baked Café hangout where people of ALL artistic abilities came out to perform. It just goes to show that art is necessary to the spiritual health of a community and can grow anywhere.
I also went to the Victoria Faulkner Centre, a space for women. I met a representative from rabble.ca and Jessica Yee, the founder of a sexual health network for Indigenous Youth.
10 hours of workshop training for 14 motivated Whitehorse youth
Facilitation is a lot like teaching.
They both fall under the category of education. The similarities? Sometimes I feel like I am learning (struggling) as I am supposed to be facilitating. For example, I’m not sure if I’ve reached the audience or hit them with the right message. I constantly find myself going back and re-examining what I did, and planning and revising activities so that I can make it better and clearer for next time. I guess that’s the teacher in me.
The tensions that I grapple with are between facilitating and teaching. The differences? I definitely do not do any disciplining. However, like teaching I feel like I am still guiding people into a direction. There still has to be an overall goal. The word teaching traditionally denotes directive learning as opposed to learner directed. However in modern times, teachers, especially those in adult education are encouraged to take on teaching that is in line with the definition of facilitation. I guess for myself, teaching and facilitating are more alike than different because I feel like it still aims to highlight the multiple paths in which to attain knowledge.
In the first session I had on September 27th with 13 BYTE youth facilitators, I asked them what they thought their youth community needs were, and the successes and challenges to youth participation in Yukon.
For the findings, go to projects.takingitglobal.org/BYTE_FT (under Documents).
The importance of intergenerational activities and dialogue was brought up.
The Yukon youth of today
Are like the Yukon miners of yesterday
Toiling for adventure in the freezing cold
Mining and pining for hoped to be gold
For goals which remain a talked about dream
A myth a reality which may not be what it seems
A sense of struggle raise questions to surface
Where is our place? Where is our purpose?
What happens when the emptiness strike
And there is no treasure
Only coals and the like?
Today the youth battle obstacles
Such as isolation, race, gender and class debacles
They are streaming down the Yukon water
A path of wondrous resource or apathetic slaughter?
About staying afloat on the changing currents
What is going to be the savior, the salvation, deterrent?
Perhaps a sense of community
Where everyone is equal with opportunity
It is hard to say only one thing I know
Is that youth must determine
Where they want to go
Transformative Learning
On the second day, we did 7 hours of training which included a TakingITGlobal workshop, the Right to Be Heard, a quick overview of Millennium Development Goals, and finally a discussion on Anti Oppression.
It was a transformative process to be able to do anti oppression training with 13 people who had virtually been strangers a few days ago. We went through the process of challenging our own assumptions, oppressions, and biases. I think identifying other people’s biases is easy, but examining the factors that oppress ourselves, or what we use to oppress others and having the safe space to address these is therapeutic. And sometimes oppressive factors are not as obvious as classifying it into racism, sexism or classism. I had never felt so close to a group of strangers as I had after that session.
The last 20 minutes was spent lightening the mood with a group hug, and a chain laughing exercise.
I can only describe the entire trip as transformative – as the power of people to connect with one another and engage each other through educational, open dialogue is a feeling that I cannot properly describe.
Oct 16th, 2008 - 03:31:35 | Tosh
Hey everyone,
Hope all is well with everyone, their families and friends.
So its almost 12:30 at night, so I won't go into too much detail. But I have been continuing to network with organizations in BC. I was able to nail down the first workshop with a school scheduled for Feb 2009 - hopefully there comes a few workshops before then. I had two meetings today - one with a young person who created a website called Youth Canada (youthcanada.ca) and another (which was actually our second meeting) with Check Your Head. The latter seems like we may be able to work together on some pretty unique things.
But its getting late and I have something to do before sleeping, but here are some things floating around which I think may be relevant:
-Online Darfur Debate
-Leadership Conference
-Networking with high school students via councellors
-Speaking to Principal and teachers conferences
-World AIDS Day
-Big names getting involved
-More networking
Good night!
Oct 13th, 2008 - 22:01:35 | Go2GurlTBAY
Encourage more people to join TIG -I've added this as a commitment. This way there is no procrastination I have committed to do it.
I have a presentation to community groups lined up for October 21st -my goal is to inform people about TIG, how it fits with the Thunder Bay youth engagement strategy, answer questions and create a buzz. From there I will set up another date to involve them in a interactive information session walking them through TIG - how and why to get involved. Keep you posted!
Go2Gurl
Oct 10th, 2008 - 17:05:21 | Kyle Simunovic
Ah! Sanity.
I'm back home for thanksgiving and just reviewing my plans for the next week as well as the accomplishments over the last several weeks. I missed the national team meeting last Friday, which sucks! My internet at home didn't work and then when I got to campus, my login credentials were off. On the bright side, Rogers gave me a month free for the "inconvenience" of not having working internet. This just points to some of the challenges of working with technology.
That said...here is a bit of an update!
I will be meeting with Nikki next week to go over the final agenda and key themes for the Live Chat at the end of the month. There are some indications that hopefully will be able to make this a bilingual chat with some help from Justine and Ilyes. More news to come here....
On the topic of our Webinars, I've developed a bit of a schedule and will work on finalizing this with Mai & Kimia and then working to implement it with Ilyes. It is my hope that we can work on the successes of last year to build these presentations into something more effective for individuals and organizations.
I will also be presenting the Social Networking for Social Change guide to a class of development students at the university of Ottawa at the end of the month. I am hoping to tailor some of the case studies more towards the field of development. If you have any suggestions please send them off to me.
Also, newsletter time is fast approaching. If anyone has any issues, comments or questions please fire me off and email or call and we can work through some of this stuff together.
I trust all is well....happy Turkey time!
kyle
Oct 8th, 2008 - 13:13:10 | Nyla Obaid
Hey everyone!
It's my first day at the TIG office today, and it feels really weird being here without the rest of the YEC, doing our training. Miss you guys!
On Monday (October 6th, 2008), I accompanied Mai to the CACE 2008 conference in downtown Toronto to do a presentation on Web 2.0 for Social Change. Our audience was professionals that worked across Canada in the education department, mainly with development and communications. There was interest in both engaging youth through Web 2.0, as well as maintaining internal communications/networking through these tools.
We did the presentation twice, for two groups, and they both went really really well. As adults, they were highly engaged the entire time, and very interested in absorbing as much information as they could. I did an ice breaker game where I asked trivia questions about Canadians and their internet usage (pulled from StatCan), and then Mai launched into the formal Web 2.0 presentation. Afterwards, Mai led very active discussions on the obstacles/successes of using technology for social networking, and also, on how to break down the stigma surrounding Web 2.0 tools (many mentioned that Facebook, MySpace etc. were blocked at their workplaces). Mai and I ran through some examples on how the web was used to reach large audiences and keep communications (we even showed the CLC project page!). I think examples were one of the most useful components of the presentation because it showed how the ideas in our presentation were actually being implemented in real life.
It was one of the first times for me working with an adult audience, and I've realized they're much easier to work with, as they are sincerely interested in the content. Also, it really helped me accompanying Mai because I had the opportunity to see the theoretical modules from our training being put into action, in front of a real audience. As a result, I feel much more confident about facilitating more workshops!
Cheers,
Naila Obaid
YEC- Toronto
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