I literally read this book over 48 hours. “A Walk Across the Sun”, by Corban Addison, is a compelling novel following two young South Asian girls who are betrayed by people that they trusted and sold into slavery, after losing their family in the 2000 Tsunami. ...
Blog
Safety Means Everyone: Building a Nurturing GBLTQ Community – by Juli MacDonnell
The last few days, I’ve been having conversations about how to nurture a rural queer community - when Gay, Lesbian, Trans, Bi, Queer (GBLTQ) people feel safe in our community and when they don’t. I talked to someone at a Youth Drop-In Centre. He told me of a...
Dating Violence is on the Rise – by Lynda Laushway
Dating violence is up across Canada according to a recent Statistics Canada report. The numbers, which encompass a wide range of relationships (boyfriends and girlfriends, exes and many permutations of intimate entanglements), were compiled from police reports from...
Training With All the Comforts of Home – By Chris Gay
SWOVA has always prided itself on the training it provides facilitators interested in delivering the Respectful Relationships (R+R) curriculum. Respectful Relationships (R+R) is a National and Provincial award winning schools-based primary violence prevention program...
So what’s in it for me? – by Chris Gay
As a contractor for SWOVA, I have very specific tasks laid out that involve project coordination. As the project coordinator for the Respectful Relationships (R+R) program, the Pass It On Program, and for the Online R+R Facilitator’s Training, I need to ensure all the...
The Best Part of Pass It On – by Chris Gay
The Pass It On female teen mentorship program has now completed its second year. This year there were 16 mentors and 16 buddies. The mentors met weekly with their mentor supervisor, Kate Maurice, for support and guidance. In addition, they met monthly as a group with...
SparkFest: A night of celebration – by Chris Gay
Kate Maurice, the Mentor Supervisor for the Pass It On female teen mentorship program, held us intimately and passionately in a circle of gratitude during an evening of entertainment on Sunday April 29th at the Harbour House Hotel. The event was a fundraiser for the...
Sparkfest: Creating and Celebrating Community – by Kate Maurice
On April 24th, Pass It On is coming to the end of this year’s program which means, in the words of female student mentor, Paige Penny, ‘We now throw Sparkfest as a way to celebrate the past year and to build momentum for the next year.” April 29th marks the 2nd...
Building Inter-generational Capacity – by Kate Maurice
The Pass It On Program is an initiative that aims to empower and support adolescent girls by providing education and skill building to help them stay safe. The project has two key components. The first is to engage high school adolescent girls in a dialogue around the...
Venturing into the world of on-line training – by Chris Gay
Respectful Relationships (R+R) is a National and Provincial award winning schools-based primary violence prevention program for youth, developed by SWOVA. SWOVA has spent almost a decade of research and development, refining ideas about how to stop bullying,...
And My Best Friend is Gay – by Christina Antonick
In the classroom, we use Energizers as activities for groups of youth to practice skill building related to the Respectful Relationships program as well as have the opportunity to move around and be in their bodies during our sessions. In a recent circle we played...
Stereotypes Create Lives Lived in Boxes — by Christina Antonick
Today in the Respectful Relationships Program, we worked with Grade 8 youth to explore stereotypes and how they relate to violence. My co-facilitator Kevin and I do a role play and act out our two scenarios of two youth in conversation. The first scene is a young man...