Liz's blog

Ayanda Dube - otherwise know as AK - brought our team to speak to the leadership in training program at Kamp Kanawana. Check out the short video!

http://www.mappingmemories.ca/tour-mapping-memories/video/ayanda-dube-ka...

This May I led a group of foreign exchange students from Germany, Austria, and Mexico on a tour of the Montreal Life Stories’ Nous Sommes Ici exhibition at the Centre d’histoire de Montréal. The students are currently taking a class on Montréal Arts and Culture at John Abbott College and were invited by their teacher Katie Green to visit the exhibit. After an introduction to the exhibit and the Life Stories project the students were given a list of questions to consider as they visited the space.

The questions were as follows:
1) What is a refugee? Who is a refugee?

We had our biggest event thus far at Marymount Academy in NDG, speaking to over 250 students who crowded into the cafeteria to hear Ayanda and Stephanie tell their stories. A big thank you to Maya Doughan for organizing the event!

Here is what some of the students had to say:

"This was a great presentation. I actually learnt a lot about refugees and I will now try to learn about my own culture. Thank you for taking the time to teach us this important lesson."

We are back in full swing after the holidays! On Monday, February 6th, Ayanda and Leontine did a presentation for 150 15-16 year old students in the school auditorium at Beurling High School in Verdun. Special thanks to Matrona Mavarakis of the LBPSB for her help organizing the event and to Principal David Abracen for the warm welcome. This is the first of several visits we will be doing with the LBPSB this term.

On Jan. 27th, Michele Luchs and Liz Miller gave a workshop in Toronto on digital storytelling to 51 YMCA staff who work directly with refugees.

Our Lauren Hill visit was a great success. We had over 100 students and Debra Arbec of CBC came to cover the event. One student asked Ayanda, " When you are not busy being an author what else do you do?" And several students commented "I wish he was our teacher" as they filed out of Andrew's classroom.