Unity Conference 2011 Program
A1. Combating HIV/AIDS related stigma, one story at a time.
Dane & Gary (PPT – Poz Youth Project)
The purpose of this workshop is to debunk the stigma and discrimination faced by HIV+ youth through positive messaging and engaging workshop participants with a series of interactive activities. Facilitators provide sex-positive, inclusive and non-judgmental education and information that empowers youth to make their own decisions about their sexual health.
A3. Beyond Boxes: The Sexual Web
Jessica O'Reilly
In this interactive workshop, we will explore the many dimensions of sexuality and the ways in which we define our sexual (and non-sexual) selves. We'll consider the meaning of identity and the ways in which labels advance and hinder our personal development and community growth.
A5. Party and Play: Queer roles in Recreation Spaces
Grant Lehman
Explore and celebrate the diverse recreational activities in which queer people participate. Identify the challenges encountered and the supports required Explore ways we can advocate for the types of recreational services and experiences that we need in our communities. Share opportunities with other queer people, building capacity and strengthen recreational networks
A6. Making Change: How to be your own best advocate
Janis Purdy (Provincial Advocate Office)
Discuss of strategies and techniques that advocates use every day in their work. Learn how to be heard by those in power, have your views respected and create change in the world.
A7. Roleplay/Playing roles
Ariel Vente
Explore your struggles with identity; how our identities are shaped by others and societal expectations, and our battle to find our true selves through drama and movement.
A8. Trans Migration
Yegi Dadui
Learn about the barriers that trans newcomers face while settling in a new country and the importance of community support. Many turn to their own communities, the same communities from which as they usually feel isolated, to help deal with depression and loneliness. Get them more involved in the community and improve their lives by doing activites.
A9. Two-Spirit History and Identity
Amanda Johnston, Sarah Morrish (MSW students)
A workshop about the history of Two-Spirit peoples and LGBT people in Indigenous communities, where the word "Two-Spirit" comes from, its various meanings, and what it represents, and a discussion of the ways that colonization effect LGBT people.
A10. Playing with Identities, Labels and Boxes!!
Kathleen O’Connell (Pride and Prejudice Program, CTYS)
Through play and movement, we will explore a variety of gender, sexual orientation, and other identities, labels, passions and interests.
A11. Community Café
The People Project
Share your opinions, hear from other youth organizers and GSA's, network and meet the fierce participants of the 2011 Unity Conference face to face. This is an all out interactive brainstorming blitz with conference participants to talk about the issues that affect us most and to develop creative strategies and responses together.
Special guests:
Vision boards: Chiedza Pasipanodya and David Lewis-Peart
Celebrate your experiences, redefine and empower yourself by creating a vision board Vision boards are typically poster boards on which images and words are collaged to reflect what you desire in the present and future.
B1. A Queerspawn Revolution: Youth from LGBTQ Families Taking Over the World!
Through Our Roots
What are the benefits, challenges and barriers may be for youth growing up in LGBTQ families? Join us to talk about who Queerspawn are, what their experiences are and how you can benefit from including Queerspawn in discussions about Queer communities.
B2. Sex, Sin, and Sacred.
Chiedza Pasipanodya and David Lewis-Peart
Moving sex from sin (all ideas of shouldn’t) to sacred, a place of great respect and reverence.This workshop will unpack our early stories about sex and sexuality, thus identifying our motivations around desire. We will also speak on how to create a healthier and empowered sexual self image that does not include shame and guilt, and looks instead to reverence and respect for yourself and by extension for others.
B4. TRANS POSITIVE EXPLOSION!! Amplifying our understanding of TRANS POSITIVITY
OUTWords arts and leadership program.
EXPLODE and AMPLIFY our understanding of TRANS POSITIVITY. Expand the word "Trans" to include everyone who is transitioning, transgendered, transgressive, and transcending, TRANS EVERYTHING! Discuss some of the ways that transphobia affects us, and the ways that we can resist it.
B5. Beyond the boxes – sexuality on the continuum
Ilaneet Goren (SOY) Rebecca Nurgitz (local artist)
Gain a critical perspective on the categorization of sexual identities and how it affects our understanding of self and judgment of others. Explore the multifaceted nature of our identities through an experiential exercise that will demonstrate the complexity of human sexuality.
B6. Challenging the gender box
Michelle Cho (GBVP),Arash Khazaei and Katelyn Procopio (Peer Educator Network)
"Man up." "Stop crying like a girl." "Girls don't sit like that!" Sometimes we just take for granted that our society has very specific expectations around what it means to be a "man" or "woman". We are forced into boxes every day and when we step out of them we are punished in ways that can really hurt. Using pop culture images, music videos, role play and popular education, participants will be given the opportunity to discuss how homophobia and sexism looks like in our schools and communities and what we can do to challenge it.
B8. Breaking down boundaries through video
Winnie Luk (Inside Out)
Have to something to say? Have something to learn? Video is one medium which can be used to express yourself. Past participants share their experiences and their films with all interested.
B10. Historical Tour of the Village
Dwayne Shaw, Dennis Findlay
Participate in a guided small-group tour of the village. Learn about the places and events that have been significant to the queer community in the Church-Wellesley area.
B11. Community Café
The People Project
Share your opinions, hear from other youth organizers and GSA's, network and meet the fierce participants of the 2011 Unity Conference face to face. This is an all out interactive brainstorming blitz with conference participants to talk about the issues that affect us most and to develop creative strategies and responses together.
Special guests:
A GSA in every school!: Alex Duffy (Egale)
Share your experiences, knowledge, ideas, and/or questions regarding creating and running GSAs and safe spaces in general. Explore some helpful tools for creating safer and more inclusive school.
A Queer Archive: Mark Reinhart
Discuss and develop contemporary, community driven, and politically engaged ways of archiving the many ways we have come to understand what it means to be QUEER.
B12 Coming 360 – Queer Work in our own Communities
Vijay Saravanamuthu, Alex Dow, Aintony Mortimore, Adam Benn
4 young queer-identified young persons share their experiences of homophobia and racism growing up in North-East Toronto. Doing queer work in the communities that have both nurtured and served as obstacles in their journeys of gender and sexual self-actualization.
C1. Queer & Trans Identity & Religion Panel
David Lewis-Peart,Leslie Kirsh, Nicole Nussbaum, Poonam Dir, May El-Abdallah
Explore the ongoing challenges and joys surrounding religion and LGBTQ sexualities in schools and society. The panelists are all from different religious backgrounds and have different relationships with their religions. Together we ask questions and learn about strategies to understand spirituality and sexuality.
C2. The Power of Words
Michael Lyons
Creative writing workshop experimenting with form and length focusing on queer identity.
Autobiographical Haikus, Six-Word Stories and Flash Fiction, oh my!
C3. H to the Omo - Hip Hop and Homophobia
Jeff Tanaka, (T.E.A.C.H Facilitator and OUTWords Participant)
. Look at the places where art, hip hop, and ending homophobia connect. Participants will share their views of hip-hop and also look towards how crucial it is to acknowledge issues of stigmatization not only towards the queer community, but also within the queer community itself.
C4. Love Bugs
Mezart Daulet (ACAS)
Love, relationship, and sex can sometimes be really big part of our life, but we never get to learn about it. The songs we listen to, the movies we watch, and the stories we hear often don’t reflect how complex and diverse our love, relationship, and sex can be. Explore the spectrum of love, relationship, and sex with interactive games and role plays.
C5. LGBT Youth Health – What Matters To You?
Dan Johnson, Sarah Butson (Youth Advocacy Training Institute)
Participants will discuss various health topics that influence LGBT youth, such as tobacco use, in an interactive workshop. Discuss what to do within your GSA or community to address these health topics using advocacy and awareness-raising campaigns.
C6. Making it Better NOW: Challenging Homophobia in Our Schools
Anna Penner and David Udayasekaran
Talk about what we can do as young people to confront homophobia and create change. Share strategies for answering tough questions and addressing homophobia. Get crafty and create posters that celebrate all of our identities for display in classrooms, hallways, or wherever they’re needed.
C7. Masking-Making the Spectrum through Art
Jasmina Majcenic, Liz Walker (Sketch)
A mask making workshop exploring intersecting identities, poverty, and the growing gap between rich and poor. We intend to make masks in an open studio setting where participants will be able to navigate the shared spaces between: art as personal, political, radical, and neutral.
C9. Telling Our Stories: Body Mapping
Bernice Chau (Youth Line)
The stories that live inside us often reflect the complex meeting places where our many identities collide. Using body mapping as a way to share our stories and share our whole selves, we come together as a community to name and heal from experiences of violence in our communities. Roll up your sleeves because we break out the art supplies for this one.
C10. Hidden Stories, Imagined Possibilities
Asian Arts Freedom School
Use art, writing and storytelling to explore the ways our personal and collective experiences of migration, displacement, movement, racism are related to our gender identities, sexualities, bodies, and desire. Open to youth who identify as people of colour, Indigenous, or mixed-race.
C11. Community Café
The People Project
Share your opinions, hear from other youth organizers and GSA's, network and meet the fierce participants of the 2011 Unity Conference face to face. This is an all out interactive brainstorming blitz with conference participants to talk about the issues that affect us most and to develop creative strategies and responses together.
C12. Historical Tour of the Village
Dwayne Shaw, Dennis Findlay
Participate in a guided small-group tour of the village. Learn about the places and events that have been significant to the queer community in the Church-Wellesley area.
C13. Queer Enough for You?
Ryan Singh
Explore the experience of growing up as a multi-ethnic, multi-identified queer youth. What is the relationship between identity and belonging
Staff Workshops
10:25-11:40am
S1. How to be an Ally: Supporting Trans Students
Ambrose Kirby
Find concrete ways to support Trans and gender-queer students. Explore the meaning of gender and how it intersects with other facets of identity (eg race, ability, class, age, etc.).
12:40-1:55pm
S2. Educational Advocacy 101
Vladimir Vallecilla/ Rai Reece (GBVP)
Examine how homophobia, transphobia, and heterosexism undermine a healthy school climate. Explore how power and privilege coalesce with oppression to create turbulent damaging effects for youth and adults. Racism and sexism have adverse impacts on communities. Recognize the importance of understanding intersectionality as a move towards addressing oppressive environments.
2:05-3:20pm
S3. A Different Kind of Marriage Struggle: Queer Youth and Forced Marriage
Sarah Hamdi, Forced Marriage Project Facilitator, AMFM Canada (Alliance of Multicultural Agencies Against Forced Marriage in Canada)
Examine how to identify cases of forced marriage, safely intervene, and help young people at-risk. Knowledge-sharing, case studies, and role-playing strategize how to best deal with these difficult and potentially violent cases.
S4. Exploring the impacts of violence on learning and the capacity to change
Jenny Horsman and Heather Lash
Address the impacts of violence on learning and introduce the inclusive resources at www.learningandviolence.net. Look afresh at old patterns of teaching and learning to see how some startlingly successful outcomes can be achieved.