I hope you are all well. It is the first full day of spring and although there is still some wintery weather coming our way, things are really heating up at NOISE!
This semester has gone by so quickly. It’s hard to believe that we’re moving into Social Action Season! Please see the poster below for information on the eight projects designed by NOISE pods. I’ll be sending out more details on each event next week. We would love to have the wider NOISE community come out to participate in and support these exciting and meaningful social action projects.
March Break was also busy at NOISE. On March 13th we hosted a Winter Frisbee event to celebrate community. It was a freeeeezing day but luckily at 2:00, sharp, the sun came out and warmed things up a bit. We had a lot of laughs and convinced over 50 people to join in and toss the frisbee. We went back to Ross after our winter adventure for games, hot chocolate and pizza.
On March 14th we held a session focusing on Life After High School:
We had a very nice turn out and our NOISE Fellows asked a lot of important and interesting questions- it really spoke to the value of these conversations and we hope to have bit more time to talk about the myths and anxiety around post-secondary education in the future. A huge thank you to Alex, Emily and Vineeth for being so generous with your time and leading these sessions.
On February 24th we held a Parent Engagement Dinner at the York U – TD Community Engagement Centre. It was nice to have the opportunity to connect and socialize with parents over a meal. Thank you to those who were able to attend, we know everyone is so busy! We received some great feedback and ideas for strengthening parent-NOISE relationships, very much appreciated.
On February 25th we hosted a NOISE Community Dialogue Session. It was a very rich and powerful evening. Melissa Dean and the Success Beyond Limits Mentors kicked things off with performances and discussion around the systems and structures that oppress communities and story telling (especially through spoken word) as a form of resistance that allows populations and places to define/ redefine themselves from within.
We shared a very tasty meal from Living Well and invited some neighbouring clubs in Atkinson to join us- they were very happy! After supper, Paul shared a video that was created by a Ryerson film student on the history of the Jane-Finch.com website. He spoke very openly about the politics and challenges of representing communities through storytelling. We were very excited by the dialogue that emerged through the performances, storytelling and sharing!
Thank you to Paul, Melissa, Kareem, Abdul, Gabriela, Aliyah and Destiny for giving your time and talents to our event. Another thank you to everyone on the NOISE team who helped out with the planning, participated in the event and to those of you who are continuing the conversations!
Those are probably the bigger pieces but we also held a Social Justice Movie & Pizza Night on February 20th, attended a Kings of Leon concert and have gone to several Raptors games. Next week we have a suite at the Hedley concert- people are very excited!
We’ve been working with our grade 9-12s on resume writing, job seeking and interview skills- this has become a huge part of our project because most of our youth have identified summer employment as a priority. We are organizing cash register/interac training sessions for youth in April (will update with details next week) and continue to search for job fairs, hiring events and youth employment programs.
If you are at York U on Monday, Pod LOUD’s Spring Food Drive will be starting. Yesterday, North York Second Harvest dropped off the first round of food bins:
There will be a bin in the School of Social Work (just 1/ 20 locations!)- if you are able, please drop by with a non-perishable food item!
Have a wonderful weekend and I’ll be in touch next week with social action updates.
Best,
Jen