Blogs
Feb 6th, 2008 - 22:46:47 | KM
feedHi everyone,
Karen here from Newfoundland. I hope you are all doing well!
I just wanted to touch base and share some views on where I think the past few months have been and where I'd like to go in the future as the OCC-Atlantic.
The past few months have been a wonderful learning curve - exploring the site, promoting to members and really (I think this is the biggest part) learning how DIVERSE, AMAZING AND HOW MUCH POTENTIAL the TIG site has... for individuals, organizations and of course, the interplay between both.
However, the past few months have not been without challenges - I keep wondering how I can market our great tools to people and really make it relevant to them. I, as a TIG member, loved the site but never knew until I became a staff member how great it was and its true depth.
Sooo I want to help change that... I feel I have a better grasp on who we are, what we do and how we can showcase ourself to others...
Feb 4th, 2008 - 23:21:45 | Aurora Herrera
Hey everyone, today I went to an event called the Power of Youth. It was organized by an amazing team of 11 and 12-year-olds part of a program called Kids in Action. They invited youth-focused organisations to come into their school and set up their materials so students could have the opportunity to learn about them.
There was a keynote speaker from Free the Children and she was amazing. Her presentation was really engaging. At the end, I spoke with the teacher who helped the kids with their initiative and she is excited about having CLC do a workshop with the kids in April.
The one thing I am a little concerned about is that - these kids are too young for the TIG website. But I really want to keep them engaged. How do I do that? They have so much passion to make the world a better place.
Any suggestions?
Feb 1st, 2008 - 10:15:52 | Nikki
Hi guys,
Tonight I am just going to hit two birds with one post as opposed to doing a separate post for each thing that I ought to be posting for. First I am going to talk a little about an event that I went to tonight, then the Bandwidth for Belonging (or Blogging) workshop and then give you a little bit of an update on what I have been up to this month.
So tonight I went to this event called “A Conversation Concerning International Development”. While the posters made it look like it was going to be an event run by the university, it was in fact held by the Ottawa Centre Young Liberals. This made me a little uncomfortable, not because I hate Liberals, but because I didn't want to get myself stuck up in something political like that and I figured that from the looks of it that it would end up being some sort of rallying opportunity for the Liberal Party. I ended up staying anyways, and although some of my apprehensions were proven correct, I am glad that I did stay. The place that it was held was jam packed, there were tons of media, and for the most part it meant that the politicians were on their best behavior. The panelists were Nick Moyer, Jenna Hoyt and Shamin Mohammed Jr. These panelists were accompanied by Glen Pearson, M.P. London North-Centre who was called the special guest for the night. The first speaker Nick Moyer, who was talked a lot about how the amount of aid is not as important as how the aid is used, and the most important thing to do with aid money is to reduce poverty. He also said that with CIDA, Canada is trying to be all things to all people and ends up being nothing at all. The second speaker was Jenna Hoyt, the founder of the Little Voice Foundation. She talked a lot about how she felt at first like she didn’t know what she was doing because she didn’t have a background in international development, but she eventually came to realize that she didn’t need an international development degree to help people. She also talked a lot about how our generation sees international development a lot in terms of one of us going over to a third world country and building a house or a school or a well etc., but we don’t have to go overseas to be involved and that sometimes it can be better if we don’t go because a Canadian volunteer would be replacing a local laborer who could get paid for making the bricks. She stressed the importance of buying local when conducting international development work – hire local workers to help and buy local materials (the savings on shipping will more than pay for the workers) because this way money is flowing into the community from all sides. Shamin Mohammed Jr. was the last panelist. He is a 19 year old Ottawa U student who when he was 16 founded the Children’s AIDS Health Program in Toronto. He spoke of how important it was to actually get to know the people, to understand their needs before taking action and that it didn’t matter how old you are you could still make a difference. One of the most memorable things he said in the evening was something that his mentor had told him when he was a teenager that “It’s not what you do for a living, it’s what you do for life that counts.” Glen Pearson talked about his experience in Sudan and the sort of difficulties that he faced once he decided to run for political office surrounding the issues that he wanted Parliament to hear, especially the situation in Sudan. He talked about how lack of communication prevented a very important development prevented important information from coming across his desk. He said that his greatest accomplishment was that he did not lose the ideals of his youth.
Other than the above event and the Bandwidth for Belonging workshop, I also attended the Social Tech. Brew Co. meeting and the YENSI meeting, both of which I have already written about. The rest of my time has been spent mostly in a lot of meetings. I met with a representative of the Fédération de la jeunesse franco-ontarienne who expressed some serious concerns with working with bilingual organizations and attending bilingual meetings. The week after the B4B workshop Mai came up and we met with Cynthia Lacasee from the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, Antoine – one of the CLC advisors and with Yassier, Ilyes and Sesse in Montreal. I worked with the Niagara Catholic District School Board on getting school engagements all ready for reading week. I am especially looking forward to doing the Guide to Action Workshop twice at St. Nicholas School for the grades 6/7 and the grade 8 classes. This will be really interesting because this school is in one of the most multi-cultural and socio-economically diverse areas of the city. I have also worked to create stronger contacts in the arts community in preparation for a TakingITGlobal Global Gallery film festival in June. I am really looking forward to this because there are lots of opportunities for youth who have produced documentaries to have their work shown but very few for young fiction directors and this will give them a great chance to show their work. I also attempted twice to get a climate change workshop off the ground, however problems with partner organization prevented those from happening.
I also spent some time planning for the new year in December, going through the workshop guide on the TIG site and planning the content of three public workshops. Though the date I had in mind for the first one is not going to work out because TIG has been invited to speak at a very big conference at Carleton on the same day, the dates will be reworked and they will be planned for Early March, Mid March and Mid April. I will work to promote these events starting at least two weeks before each event.
Up to this point I have found that some of the biggest challenges for me in carrying out this program have been finding spaces to hold events and in co-hosting events and having people pull out at the last minute. I find that so much of my time is spent trying to find a place that is accessible and reasonably priced to try to hold an event in Ottawa is next to impossible. Especially considering I only started in October, a lot of the best spaces to have things are booked up a year or more in advance making things really frustrating. I have also found it extremely difficult working with other organizations on co-hosting things. My climate change workshop has been canceled/pushed back twice already and the B4B workshop was pushed back as well. Though I am fully aware that people are busy, I just wish there was a little bit more notice. I think that from this I have learned that there has to be something iron clad and that you can't really depend on anyone else to get things done.
Jan 31st, 2008 - 18:17:14 | Jenny
Hey everyone!
I hope that you are all enjoying the new year, and that your regional TIG work is going super well.
Here in the East, January has been a month of re-settling and planning for me. The Atlantic team had an inspiring meeting mid-month, in which we affirmed the importance of us increasing our meager member numbers (tongue twister unintended). Since then, I have been working on gathering the contact information of the guidance counselors at the middle school and high school in the Halifax Regional Municipality. I would like to visit the guidance counselors, if possible, and distribute to them TIG materials, such as bookmarks and pamphlets, that they can display as resources at their schools. Also, this would be an opportunity for networking, with a further objective of presenting workshops, making presentations, etc.
Also, Lise Richard of St. FX University, and I, are planning on presenting more Climate Change workshops to high school students in Antigonish on Feb 15. We aim to fine-tune our previous presentation, especially with regards to our one-hour time frame (we underestimated the length of our presentation last time). I am excited that we are engaging students in a relatively rural part of Nova Scotia. In addition to this workshop, a student at King's College in Halifax who attended the recent UN Climate Change conference as part of CYDB, and I will be presenting a Climate Change workshop to students at Halifax West High School.
This coming week is International Development week, so look out for plenty of global issues-related events in your area (there is lots going on in Halifax!).
Take care,
Jenny
Jan 31st, 2008 - 14:02:30 | ilyes
The month of January was full of activity for me.
First, this past month, I read all the information contained in the general orientation documents and I explored all the new exciting features of the TIG site.
Moreover, I got in contact with communications people from relevant organizations in Quebec such as Metropolis Bleu ( http://metropolisbleu.org/ ) and Association pour la Création Littéraire chez les Jeunes (http://projetjeunesse.com/) and added their org profiles to the TIG database. I also promoted several events taking place in Montreal such as David Suzuki lecture at McGill University (http://events.takingitglobal.org/17175) and a conference organized in UQAM about human rights (http://events.takingitglobal.org/16831) .
I also invited more Quebec people to join TIG and promoted its tools and resources and invited them to join the group I just created called Liaisons Québec that you can visit at http://groups.takingitglobal.org/clcqc. Furthermore, I promoted the francophone blog contest among Canadian francophone networks. Last but not least, I invited TIG members to take part in my poetry project ( http://projects.takingitglobal.org/poetry ). By the way, your participation will be highly appreciated !
Currently, I am helping a group called PaixQuebecPeace to set up a TIG group as well as a TIG project to help them manage in their outreach and follow-up. Actually, the PaixQuebecPeace group most of whom are under 25 http://www.paixquebecpeace.ca/ is having a conference Feb 4 and I invited them to promote their events on TakingITGlobal.
To sum up, I enjoyed my work as part of the CLC team and I invited many of my friends to join TIG and explore its useful tools and resources.
All the best,
Ilyes El Ouarzadi
Agent de liaison de la Communauté Virtuelle du Québec / Quebec Online Community Connector
Projet Liaison Locales Canada / Creating Local Connections Project
TakingITGlobal
http://profiles.takingitglobal.org/committedman
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