Celebrating youth engagement and their projects!
July 28, 2020
A huge congratulations to all the Youth Changemakers who led Community Action Projects this year across Canada!
This year again, Youth Changemakers from across Canada worked with Equitas to realize Community Action Projects (CAPs) to address community issues that matter to them and affect their human rights. Through their CAPs, Youth Changemakers were able to raise awareness, shift attitudes and behaviours, realize concrete projects to advance social justice and engage decision makers to make their communities more respectful, inclusive, and equitable.
Throughout the country, youth are facing multiple issues and systemic barriers that prevent them from accessing their rights. Equitas thinks that equipping young people with knowledge about their rights and creating opportunities for them to take leadership in addressing those issues is crucial. When realizing CAPs, youth become important advocates who engage their community members and decision-makers to join them and fulfil their responsibilities to promote and protect youth rights. Together, we challenge status quo and take action to fight human rights violations.
There are 5 steps that Changemakers take for their CAPs:
- Motivate themselves to become Changemakers in their communities.
- Explore how issues in their community are linked to inclusion, youth participation, and human rights.
- Investigate what pressing issues youth in their communities are facing and focus the issue for the CAP.
- Take Action by creating and implementing the plan for the CAP to create a more inclusive and welcoming community for all.
- Evaluate and Celebrate their projects!
We have arrived at Step 5. Changemakers have been working hard on their CAPs since October and it is time to celebrate them! While normally CAPs celebrations would be in-person, this year with COVID-19, we will need to be creative. Instead, Equitas will be celebrating the CAPs virtually using social media for the next week!!
Here's a cool video that explains what a Community Action Project is, and why we are celebrating them this week!
We have a lot to celebrate:
