Tukopamoja ("We are together")!

Jambo rafikis! Habari yako? Hello friends! How are you?

As you may know, I have just returned from three weeks in the Maasai Mara of Kenya. My co-facilitator, Sally, and I led twenty-nine youth on a trip filled with school-building, community relationships, and leadership skills. Our "typical" day looked like this:

8:00 a.m. - Wake up
8:30 a.m. - Breakfast
9:00 a.m. - Buildsite
12:00 p.m. - Free time
1:00 p.m. - Lunch
2:30 p.m. - Leadership activities and/or games
6:30 p.m. - Dinner
7:30 p.m. - Leadership activities and/or games

Some days we visited other communities and Free The Children projects, which would switch up our daily routine a bit. Some highlights include: visiting Kisaruni and seeing Free The Children projects, conversations with Peter about the Maasai culture, and seeing youth transform over the course of three weeks. Some challenges include: not being as fluent in Swahili as I wanted to be, comments or conversations from people that were hard to comprehend, and not packing warm enough clothes (who would have thought Kenya would be cold?).

These next few entries will be filled with stories, pictures, and statistics from Kenya, specifically the community of Osenetoi. Enjoy :)

Cheers,
Bria

"It's not a question of 'Can we?' but 'Will we?"

I returned this weekend from spending a week with 63 incredible young people, all ready to change the world... I was lucky enough to be a facilitator at Me to We's Take Action Academy! The week was filled with leadership and social justice workshops, incredible guest speakers, and a lot of fun with the kids.

The Academy was held at our Me to We Leadership Centre in Bethany, Ontario. It's ten acres of green forest with a horse farm in the backyard, it's beautiful. When you walk into The Spark Hall, there are break out rooms (all named after a country we work in) and Gratitude Hall (where we eat all our meals). In Gratitude Hall, there are two signs - "Take what you need" and "Eat what you take". After each meal, we weigh our waste and make goals to bring down the amount of food we waste during meals. Our breakout rooms are where we met with our groups and had workshops. At the end of each day, we would go around the circle and say our "Roses (favorite part of the day) and Thorns (worst part of the day)". My favorite was when every kid's rose was Jonathan's speech... it was so incredible to hear 20 kids say he had such a huge impact on their life given what he's done for my life. Another thing we did many nights was "Snaps". We had a "Snaps" wall where kids could write something for each other if they want to whether it's around something nice they did for someone, a way that they really helped out in a workshop, etc... just snaps :)

Three highlights would have to be the Hunger Dinner and Jonathan's speech, Shelley's speech about HIV/AIDs, and the final night.

At the Hunger dinner, we split the kids into three groups - high income, middle income, and lower income. The numbers were based off of actual percentages (so there were only 8 of 63 kids in the upper class) and they were given food rations to go along with their class. The upper class got a four course meal and fine dining service, the middle class had rice and beans, while the lower class had a cup of beans and minimal water. Those of us that were at Academy for the first time didn't know what to expect... At first the kids were being kids and taunting each other, then once the lower class saw us scraping the upper class leftover food into our compost bin they freaked out. All of a sudden the lower class charged at the upper class, grabbing any food and drinks they could. I honestly thought it was going to be bad, I thought we would be making a hospital run, it was scary. This kind of behavior continued until we ended the dinner (it lasted about an hour and a half). We then went outside and had a debrief, as well as one in our breakout groups. Many of the kids were very affected by it... One girl in the upper class was in tears during dinner because she couldn't handle that she was getting so much and her friends were getting nothing. It was intense. Some statistics Jonathan shared with us after:
-There is enough food produced in our world that if we split it evenly among the ~7 billion people in the world... we could feed everyone three times over.
-1/4 of the top 1% of people in the United States own half of the wealth in the US.
-There are 40-50 million hungry people in the United States.
-In the United States, we produce enough food to feed the population TEN times over.

The next day Shelley gave an incredible talk about HIV/AIDs. We learned that HIV is 100% preventable and with a simple $20 a pregnant woman can receive a shot that would prevent HIV from affecting her baby (40% of children with HIV get it from their mother). During her talk, she kept mentioning that a famous quote related to this topic was, "It's not a question of 'can we?' but 'will we?"... and the kids loved that! To sum up Shelley's talk, here are some fascinating facts:
-33 million people affected by HIV/AIDs globally.
-2.7 million people will become affected this year.
-In the year 2000, drug companies made a profit of $100 billion after investing only $21 billion into AIDs research.
-Of the 2 million children living with HIV, 90% are in sub-Saharan Africa.

My final favorite time was the last night... We had our "Action dinner" where all the youth shared their action plans and celebrated. Afterwards, we had a talent show and dance. One of the participants in my group is a very shy girl, and that night she stood in front of her peers to sing Miley Cyrus' "The Climb". When she said how nervous she was, 60+ people stood up cheering "You can do it!!" and encouraged her. She sang through the second chorus, stopped, and was bear hugged by every youth in the room... It was incredible. After that, she informed Jennie and I that she was always the quiet girl in school but she just feels comfortable at Academy and she was so proud of herself. It was magical.

Needless to say... Academy rejuvenated my heart and reminded me why I do my job. Now this week will consist of finishing my prep for Kenya, packing, moving to a new house, and heading to the Massai Mara on Thursday! I am extremely excited for this adventure and to meet 29 new, amazing, young people eager to change the world.

Chat with y'all in August!
Bria

"Dear Me... You are going to Kenya!"

I spent last week in beautiful Bethany Hills, Ontario at our Me to We Leadership Centre for trips training. I was in a building with 40+ incredible, inspiring, and experienced peers and facilitators. I spent three days picking brains, gaining knowledge, and being challenged. The reality has smacked me in the face that in less than two months I will be traveling to a country I have never visited, facilitating with a person I have never met, and be responsible for the lives of 29 young people... Holy moly! I have learned what to do in extreme cases (life or death scenarios), how to deal with withdrawn youth, what to do if my co-facilitator falls ill or we don’t get along, etc.

During this training, I have tried really hard to challenge myself. Instead of just copying notes and participating in modules, I have tried to mentally put myself into the situations. How would I debrief that module? What would I do if I received a lot of push back from a kid? How would I keep calm if a participant is seriously injured or worse? What would I do if I found participants getting... well, touchy? All these questions flew through my head as I realized I couldn’t answer them. I realized I need self reflection. So that’s what I’m going to do. I am giving myself a set amount of time (not yet decided how long or when) which I will use to analyze myself. To pick apart my own brain... What are my strengths and weaknesses as a facilitator? What makes me tick? How do I handle stress? These are just a few of the key things I need to learn about myself, and be comfortable with, before I can facilitate with another person and expect them to be comfortable with me.

So here’s to new adventures and self reflection.

Cheers!
Bria

Oh and PS – HAMZA SURPRISED US ON DAY TWO... HE’S BACK! No big deal or anything :D

Dare To Dream

Last Friday I was given the opportunity to give an outreach speech to a community in Dunnville, Ontario that are part of the Dream program. Dream (designing routes to education and mentorship) is a mentoring organization that focuses on bettering the community through youth by providing them with academic, social, and financial support for secondary education. I was really excited to visit this community because it reminded me a lot of FAM for Change. At FAM, we focus on empowering youth from Brockton High School to make a difference in their own lives, make a difference in their community, and make a difference in the world. We do this by helping them with their school work, participating in campaigns like Halloween for Hunger, and teaching them about various worldly issues. At Dream, they also do these things through global literacy programs and events completely run by the youth.

This speech was a great opportunity for me in different ways. First, I was able to see an existing mentoring organization right here in Ontario, and one similar to FAM. It made me so happy (much like “Strip the Streets” did) to be able to see young people mentoring each other and putting on their own events. Secondly, I was able to speak to my own experiences with mentoring and virtually (via pictures) introduce the community of Dunnville to my mentor, Jonathan, and my mentees, Nichole and Angel. It gave me a great sense of pride to be able to express how important mentorship is and to see the pride in the kids’ faces when I asked, “who here has mentored someone?”

Every day this job presents new challenges. Every day this job presents new goals. Every day presents new dreams. And every day this job presents new feelings of accomplishment... Friday was one of those days.

Cheers!
Bria

The end of the best four years of my life.

Greetings! Long time no update friends... Sorry!

I just recently returned to good ol' TO after spending a great week home with my family and friends in Massachusetts. The main purpose of my visit was to walk in Bridgewater State University's Commencement for the Class of 2011! It truly was a beautiful ceremony, followed by an interesting, fun, and energetic party in my parents backyard. The day was all I thought it would be and more and I could not have felt more grateful for the people present in my life.

Among those people, the most important for my growth at BSU and as a woman, was my family, my mentor, Dr. Jonathan White, and my Social Justice League/FAM/Free The Children peers. If it wasn't for this cohort of people, my years at BSU would not have been nearly as successful or memorable as they were. Without the love, support, dedication, and push of these people, I would never have had the opportunities to...

Mentor two amazing young people, Angel and Nichole.
Educate my fellow peers and community on issues such as homelessness, children's rights, global education.
Help BSU become sweat free through the Workers Rights Consortium.
Meet and introduce an inspiring individual, and now good friend, Michel Chikwanine.
Convince Sodexo and BSU to sell fair trade coffee on campus.
Be an active part in BSU's decision to become a fair trade university.
Help plan and participate in four consecutive Tent Cities.
Received Outstanding Leadership awards or the Who's Who.

My years at BSU have been, by far, the most intense, worthwhile, life-altering years I have yet to face in my young life. The people I met have shaped me to be who I am and have taught me to never doubt myself and always look for ways to improve and enhance what I am doing in life. My friends in the Social Justice League, FAM for Change, and Free The Children taught me that it is indeed young people that change the world every day.

Without my mentor, Dr. Jonathan White, I never would have broken out of my shell and learned about the issues that have now consumed my life. I never would have thought I could write a 10+ page journal entry about Genocide, multiple research papers about inequality, or an Honors Thesis. Without my mentor, I do not believe I would have made it to graduation day as soon as I had... he pushed me and encouraged me through hard times, convinced me of my potential, and never hesitated to say (nicely, of course) "I told ya so" when I would be rewarded with awards at BSU. And finally, without my mentor and friend, I never would have taken a leap of faith like moving to a new country to work for Free The Children. He introduced me to the organization and assured me that I could make a life for myself here... and I have.

So to my loving family and friends... Thank you. It is because of you that I have accomplished so much in such a short time, and to you I owe this honor.

We all smile in the same language.

I just found out I'll be facilitating a Me to We trip to Kenya from July 21 - August 10!

Free The Children is a non-profit. We run campaigns and events, we tell youth all the ways they can change the world, and we do Adopt A Village in seven countries. Adopt A Village is our sustainable development model where we address all the different reasons why kids may not be able to go to school. We build schools, we provide alternative income (so kids don't have to work), we provide clean water (so girls can go to school and they get clean water), and we provide health care so families can get help they need.

Me to We is the social enterprise, they provide better choices for a better world (and 50% of the profits go to FTC). They have style so that we know children aren't making our clothes, they provide artisan work (beading done by Kenyan women) so that we can sell it and give the profit back to their groups, they do leadership seminars and workshops, and finally... they run trips to four of our seven AAV countries so kids can go actually work on FTC projects.

A few weeks ago I interviewed to lead trips. I didn't tell any of my friends because I was nervous I'd be embarrassed if I didn't get accepted. I put my preferences as Kenya and India, and I just received an email asking me to lead a trip in Kenya this summer... I am SO excited!

I'm excited because...
-I've always wanted to travel to Africa
-Kenya is our most popular country for trips and projects so it will be nice to have the experience
-It will be so incredible to see, and work on, Free The Children projects
-I will get to improve my leadership skills, facilitation skills, and speaking skills
-I just really wanted to travel this summer...

I'm so stoked... I feel like this is such a phenomenal opportunity for me. I can't wait to brush up on my facilitation skills and really dig deep into FTC/M2W projects.

Check back for details to come...

"The love of one’s country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?"
-Pablo Casals

"Murphy's Law: Don't play leapfrog with a unicorn!"

I'm a bit behind in my blogging which simply means there will be a few updates to come. The first? St. Patrick's Day in Toronto!

My roommates and I attend the St. Patty's parade on Yonge Street. While we were there, we had a man filming us saying where we were for his YouTube website (he was a little strange) - RealGuyTV or something like that. The parade lasted an hour and a half and was more interactive than the Southie parade, which surprised me. There were tons of community groups, Irish groups, and legit only one tank to represent the military... The difference in military presence here from the States is crazy, but that's a whole different subject!

There were lots of kids on floats, one of which had my favorite sign - "Murphy's Law: Don't play leapfrog with a unicorn". Also on many floats were live bands playing old Irish songs with step dancers behind them. After the parade we hit up an Irish pub and had some Guinness and my first ever plate of poutine - it was delicious! Overall, it was a lot of fun and we really enjoyed our day!

The following weekend Julie's brother Andrew visited and the three of us went on a Raptors adventure. After Andrew left, Adam came! Our weekend consisted of a Mill Street Brewery tour, drinks at a bar right next to the Air Canada Centre where the Leafs play (Bruins were in town) and the Hockey Hall of Fame! It was really nice to have a friend from home come see my temporary home - my second favorite city, the good ol' TO. He really enjoyed the time here and I was glad he could see what I am doing with my life :)

Keep your eyes peeled for more updates...