One week down!

It's already Sunday... where did the week go?! We just finished having 'family dinner' and a house meeting, and now it's about time to get myself together for the upcoming week... But first... my first week at FTC!

Welcome to Free the Children! My name is Bria and I will be your new Outreach Speaker for the Youth Team :) Conveniently, my desk is set up in the "Team America" office because there was no space for me in the Outreach Office. My first week was super hectic, intense, and incredible! Everyone at FTC and M2W has been over the top in making sure I feel comfortable and understand everything that's fluttering around me. I spent the week reading up about the organization (still not done!) and meeting with what felt like a million people (okay it was more like two dozen) to go over different programs within FTC. I still have a few people to meet with, but most of those training meetings are done and over with. The most interesting meeting I sat in on was learning about the We Schools in Action Program (WESAP). What is WESAP you ask? Well I'll be glad to tell you...

Can you pick out my desk?!

WESAP is a group of schools who, after attending We Day, commit to making one local and one global action of social change throughout the school year. They are responsible for reporting back to FTC and keeping us posted on what they are doing, their results, etc. They are the first schools to get chosen to attend We Day and they definitely work their butts off to accomplish their goals they set once they get back to school. Now, what is We Day? Well, I'm glad you asked...

We Day is... well, We Day is a social activists pep rally as Diane Bell once put it. It's a day where thousands of youth come together to show their love and commitment of changing the world. We Day typically happens between Oct and Nov and usually in three cities - last year it was Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. Most of you know, I have volunteered with BSU at the last two We Days in Toronto. Put it this way... last year there were 18,000+ youth at the We Day Toronto... 18,000 youth that want to make a difference in the world! Pretty powerful, eh? :)

So this year, we are also having a We Day in Waterloo - where many MOBilizers (a group of super awesome youth that are called the MOB in FTC and M2W) attend school. This We Day will be taking place on February 17th... yes, my birthday, and will have roughly 5,000 youth in attendance! Biggest birthday party ever! Anyways, I was put on the 'crowd-pumping' team - a team which is responsible of dressing ridiculously, teaching all the youth the We Day dance, and just pumping up the crowd all day long with Lev3l energy! That being said... at We Day Waterloo, Shawn Desman is the opening act. He is a popstar from Toronto and is pretty well known and well liked up here. Today, us crowd pumpers and about 15 chosen from the MOB went to his wife's dance studio where he and his back up dancer, Jungle, taught us the choreography from his music video "Night Like This". In turn, we taught him the We Day dance. When We Day happens, he will open up the show, and when "Night Like This" comes on, we get to go on stage and do his dance with him. Later on in the show, we're hoping he'll help us teach the We Day dance! So yeah, we got dance lessons from a popstar :) it was pretty sweet!

This week, I have a meeting with Louise to begin discussing the difference between telling a story and story telling. After meeting with her and shadowing Amber on her first speech, I will begin writing my speech! I have been thinking all weekend about it, which personal story to use, how to frame it, etc. I think I came up with a story - one from Belize - that I really want to use... I'm going to get some general feedback about it first though. I'm a little nervous about writing the speech because then I have to practice it for Louise and Dawson and I get really nervous speaking in front of my peers. I'm excited for this opportunity though, I think this will really help me in my public speaking skills and hopefully take away that fear :) We shall see what this week holds...

In Peace,
Bria


Odd Canadian fact of the week: No one has any idea what Fluff is! Apparently it's a Massachusetts thing... thankfully my former boss loves me and will be mailing me a package with Fluff in it :) crisis averted!