While young people already know it's important to stand up for themselves and others, they don't always have the tools to know how to do so.
From 9 a.m. until 2 p.m. this Friday, youth between the ages of 12 and 18 are invited to the Immigrant and Multicultural Services Society office event space for a full-day of workshops and interactive seminars to learn how to empower themselves and fight back against intolerance.
Speak Up: PG, builds on the society's Youth Dialogue Project, a series of three previous evening workshops for youth focused on bullying, gangs, racism and hate crimes.
"I think the vision was to create a day where, it's just not an opportunity for kids to sit for one hour and get one snippet of information. It's an opportunity for them to go through different facilitators and different workshops and learn about different topics and see how everything links together," said project co-coordinator Purnima Sharma.
The symposium was borne out of feedback from high school students looking for more answers.
"How do we speak up against bullying? What do we do? How can we intervene without being bullied ourselves or making the situation worse? How do we become leaders? These are questions they were posing back at us. We felt the need to a day of workshops to help answer these questions," Sharma said.
Participants will learn about inner empowerment though laughter yoga, engage in bullying scenarios with Street Spirits Theatre Co., learn how to protect themselves with martial arts and get informed about online dangers from the RCMP.
"It's going to be fun and I think that's sometimes missing from the equation. To engage youth, or anyone for that matter, there has to be an element of fun - something that is going to really make an impact and the arts is a really strong and powerful way... to facilitate that," said Sharma's co-worker Anisa Martin.
The event - funded by Embrace BC - is free of charge, provides a lunch and is open to all youth, not just immigrant youth who may already be familiar with IMSS, said Martin. Providing those opportunities for young people of diverse backgrounds to interact with each other in a different forum is beneficial to both immigrant youth and those Canadian-born.
"I think it's all about giving kids tools and knowledge that is maybe different from what they're learning at school or at home - to maybe spark within them this flame of wanting to do more and wanting to involve themselves in different sectors of the community," Sharma said.
To register for Speak Up: PG, contact Sharma or Martin at 250-562-2900 or email them [email protected] or [email protected].
