Citizen imprint project (Ages 12-17)

About the project:

The goal of the Citizen Imprint Project is to expand the body of Imprint Projects throughout the different regions of Canada. Encouraged by the success of our projects over the past five years, we hope to further propose that schools integrate our support and mobilization program that focuses on raising student awareness, and training and involving them in seeking solutions for various forms of intolerance.

This project is made possible thanks to funding by Canadian Heritage.

Year One of the project:

Further to Caravan workshops, interested students will be asked to form an ad hoc committee to implement a mobilizing action in the school based on the topic of better living together in a pluralist society, a first imprint. The committee will get together over the lunch hour at five weekly meetings. The meetings will first focus on discussion, then on preparing the action selected by the participants and, finally, its implementation.

Year Two of the project:

A Citizen Imprint Project, lasting the entire school year, will be assigned to four schools in each of the three selected Canadian regions (Maritimes, Ontario, Ottawa Valley and Quebec). This program to support secondary student committees is intended to promote respect for diversity and combat intolerance and its manifestations, discrimination and bullying.

Headed by an ENSEMBLE project leader, the student committees identify an intolerance problem in their school, develop a plan of action and, throughout the school year, initiate awareness and mobilization activities for a positive transformation in their school. Imprint committee youths thus act as a springboard by informing and equipping their fellow students and by taking concrete actions to promote living together and respect for diversity in all its forms. Not only do these activities have highly mobilizing potential, they considerably impact the climate in the participating schools and further promote student commitment and leadership and empower young people to create a more open, safe and inclusive school.

Imprint project format:

• Tolerance Caravan awareness: An interactive workshop on diversity and discrimination, the Caravan’s goal is also to encourage youth to reflect on their civic responsibility by eliminating the different forms of intolerance that exist in their own living environment.
• Recruitment, information and orientation meetings: In each school, ten or so youths are recruited depending on their motivation to be involved in combatting bullying, intolerance and discrimination.
• Training camp: Young people taking part in Imprint committees attend a two-day training camp. This camp will familiarize them with different topics on cultural, sexual and religious diversity and various manifestations of intolerance (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.).
• Action: The students will move on to the crux of the project, namely, the detailed development and implementation of the committee’s actions in the school. These awareness raising and mobilization actions take on different forms (video, booth, display, bracelets, photos, etc.).
• Le Grand rassemblement (Rally): The students take a look back at the activities organized during the year and share them with students from other schools. This is also an opportunity for them to reconnect with students they met at the training camp.

Goals:

1. Develop student empathy, solidarity and responsibility and encourage them to take concrete actions;
2. Give the students the tools to organize projects, take actions and mobilize or rally their community;
3. Promote a culture of student consultation in making decisions on issues that affect them;
4. Support and equip school professionals when taking the students’ needs and opinions into account.

Impact:

Students gain

• New sensitivity to issues of respect and openness to diversity;
• Leadership, public speaking and project implementation training;
• Pride in carrying out a project beneficial to their schools and their peers;

Schools gain

• Motivated and trained student leaders;
• A project mobilizing or rallying both the student body and staff on issues specific to their school.

For more information, contact us at info@ensemble-rd.com or phone 514 842-4848.

This project is funded by Canadian Heritage.