2020 04 Expressing Care Sessions

The early days of the pandemic were intense, emotional and overwhelming. Youth were isolated in their homes with free time and a desire to connect. As one of the goals of the Halton Youth Initiative is advocating and creating positive youth hangout spaces, Lily and the Creative Spaces Team got busy preparing a number of “posted and hosted” events and activities so that other youth could connect and find things to do!

Posted events were DIY videos or step-by-step tutorials that we would share on our IG stories and on the HYI website. Hosted events were fun activities and competitions that we would play on ZOOM with other programs running in the background, such as Kahoot or Houseparty. People earned points for attending multiple events, for a final draw that happened at the end of June.

Having youth lead with activities they had an interest in, allowed them to feel confident in their abilities to host and facilitate. Lily also did one host and one post activity as a show of solidarity with the teammates, and this also provided students with a chance to learn and understand her strategy without it feeling directed at them. (Lead by example)

So many amazing youth shared their special talents and interests to pull off this 6 week campaign. This group was a merge of Aldershot Youth Crew, the Seven Somebodies and Lily’s cousins in Milton! They include Noah Edwards, Stuart Furzer, Selena Gouveia, Simona Liu, Emily Mondoux, Gabriel Moulton, Faith Mulder, Eva Ohata, Charlie Schulte-Laurat, Toni Schulte-Laurat, Tyler Snyder, Isha Tokas and Jenna Wittich.