Halifax, Nova Scotia Program UpdatesDay One Day Two Day Three
Monday, September 29, 1997 6:51:47 PMHere is an outline of what today's speaker spoke about. Our speaker was Professor Charles Beaupre of Saint mary's Univeristy and our theme was "Overview of Asia".
All in all everything went very well. Not as many students showed up as we expected. Some had their priviledges revoked by the principal and others changed their minds because they didn't want to miss too much class. In any case, the students that did come participated a lot by asking a lot of questions, discussing the theme at hand. We even launched into an interesting discussion on overpopulation and whether or not it is a cause or symtom of many other problems such as (poverty, pollution, depletion of resources, etc.)
The students were all very excited to participate in the videoconferencing. In fact I even think their nerves were a bit jittery!
After the Opening Ceremonies, instead of heading home as planned, we went down the street to the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design for the opening of an art exhibit entitled the Energy of Asian Design which featured works representing 6 different Asian-Pacific countries. It was abosolutely amazing to say the least.
Thus, as for day one, everything is going smoothly. We even got another $1,000 from the Dept. of Education today! Whoo! Whoo!
I am eagerly awaiting tomorrow's surprises!!!!
Katrina
Tuesday, September 30, 1997 7:27:43 PM
Well, day 2 already! Today we discussed Cross Cultural Communication. We had two speakers in, the first was John Lam, who came to Canada when he was 11yrs old from Hong Kong. The other was Tamer who's father is from Ethiopia, mother is from Egypt, he grew up in Saudi Arabia, and he studied in the Philippines. He then came to Canada 3 years ago. Both of these speakers brought up a lot of interesting points and concerns.
However, it became evident to me as we neared the end of the day that our group really needed a FULL day just to discuss some of these issues. Racism was a hot topic today....however, I feel that our group needs to be educated on this issue a lot more. They don't seem clear on what racism really is, how it manifests itself, and what implications it has on people of color.
We tried to address all of these issues as they arose however, it really became impossible to do. There were some youth in our group who had been educated on racism but the majority of them had not. Even some of the racially visible people in our group (i felt) may have internalized a lot of racism because they too seemed uneducated on the issues. Many even felt they had NEVER EVER experienced racism??????
Thus, the majority of our day was spent trying to get at these issues and trying to open a few minds.
In any case...the morale of the story is...it was a long, hard day. While I was happy with the hard work we put into it, I would like to reexamine the issue of racism with our group again. Although I don't know if that will be possible given the time available.
Anyhow, that's day 2 in Halifax
Katrina
Wednesday, October 1, 1997 9:50:11 PM
Well, today was a better day. This morning quite a few students had test to write thus, many did not attend the morning session of the movie "Double Happiness". However, many of the students who did watch it really enjoyed it. We broke them into two groups and had them discuss: the obstacles facing them, the issues relevent to them, how they could reach a common ground. We had group 1 address these from the parents perspective, and group 2 address these from Jade's perspective. We then got the students to identify some of the instances in the movie where the parents and Jade sort of came head to head and asked members of each group to do a role play: the goal being to change the script so to speak and reach a common ground. This was very productive and proved more difficult than it appears. Students really got a chance to see both sides of the coin.
In the afternoon, we had a speaker come to discuss the Girl Child in Asia. And more specifically her experience adopting two children from China and South Korea. This was extremely successful. The students thoroughly enjoyed her elcture and even took her cards so she could come back and speak to some of their classes!
This evening we had another speaker Dr. Ravi Ravindra who soke about religion. His lecture was also amazing however, due to the evening time slot, attendence was low.
But all in all a good day!
Katrina
asia@tgmag.ca
© 1997 - TG Magazine / The Students Commission
© 1997 le magazine TG / la Commission des Ètudiants