Jun
24
Jun
24
Earlier this year we started a new pilot project called passionTOaction (p2a) thanks to our amazing volunteer Jenn McRae.
We’ve highlighted some of their journey in our Vancouver Observer articles as these girls are really taking their leadership to the next level and it’s something that needs to be shared with our beautiful city.
Recently the girls from p2a were given an amazing opportunity to take part in the Love Vancouver Festival.
Marie-Claire and Hannah shared this video from their experiences at LVF. Oh! Did we mention their amazing blog?
Today three of the girls: Laura, Marie-Claire and Hannah met Loretta Cella, Passion ED at Lunapads where Madeleine Shaw shared her story of starting Lunapads and why their amazing products make a difference in this world and in the lives of girls and women around the world.
We can’t thank people like Madeleine and all the other volunteers enough for sharing their experiences and energy with the p2a team. As well at Vancouver organizations like Gordon Youth Search Employment Programs for donating space each week.
The p2a girls are also taking part in an incredible new tv series on SHAW cable called Good for You, Good for the Earth with our fabulous Passion Board Member Lori Petryk. Stay tuned for details!
Jun
18
We all know how important it is to know our personal space right? But how often do we actually take time to look at what our personal space (aka comfort zone) looks like? What it means to us? And how we can use the awareness of our personal space and other people’s space to build positive relationships as well as keep harm away from us.
There are all kinds of statistics out there about the high percentages of girls and young women who experience abuse and violence. Today we were shown a stat that 1 in 8 girls are sexually assaulted before the age of 18. And the average age of a woman who enters into prostitution in Canada is 12-14 years old. That’s real. We also know that when a girl feels confident in who she is and is socially connected in a positive way the percentages go down and she more likely she is to ask for help if something does happen.
So instead of just talking about it, a group of girls in Vancouver got to design their personal space, talk about what it means, and shared with their peers how it changes based on how they were feeling. They even got to take their personal space and share it with others as they moved around the room. They were able to determine how it changed as they encountered some of the others in the room (bigger or smaller) and how they’re emotions accompanies the change.
Essentially Passion Projects build life literacy. Passion Projects are ways that girls really get to know who they are, what they want, and how to bring positive community together to make it all happen! They provide girls a safe space to build their potential from the inside out!
Check out some of their designs. You can imagine how fun the dialogue was and how empowering it was for the girls to own their space and bring that space in their community.
Jun
10
Since April we have been working with a dynamic but rather shy group of grade 7 girls in Vancouver who the school identified as girls who could really benefit from some leadership development. We’ve posted some of their work on our blog
Today we completed our work together but holding mini conference fun day at their school. They had the ideas, they generated the activities, and we put it together. They even got to invite some of their class mates
Thanks to some amazing volunteers including Tiffany from Beauty Night Society who taught the girls to make homemade hair condition and face masks and Julia Spitale who sing with and for the girls (even Loretta, Passion ED, did her duet debut!). With generous donations from Kat Thorsen we made sock pigs. And thanks to Vyvian’s mom who came out and did 30 sets of nail polish designs we had a busy four hours and lots of fun!
It was amazing to see all the girls, their leadership and the positive contribution to their school and peers. We even had our sponsor teacher state how amazing it has been to see the transformation in the girls and the vice principal has invited us to come back next year.
Passion Avenue girls.. you are amazing! You’ve done amazing work and we are all so proud of you!
We’d also like to give a special shout out to our amazing new volunteer Sabine who gave her entire morning/afternoon to helping us out and making today run smoothly!
Check out some pictures we shot today!
