Across Newsletter June 2021

JUNE 2021 ISSUE

Across U-hub TOGETHER WE CARRY ON

Contents Introduction - 01 SHARP Program - 02 City Mosaic Volunteer Sharing - 03 Together We Carry On Placement Student Sharing - 04

Introduction As the warmer days come up, many people cannot wait to enjoy the sunshine and spend time outdoors with their closed ones. This year City Mosaic is happening right at the heat of the summer. With the program being online, participants have a month to explore the city at their own pace. City Mosaic has designed their routes to visit places all over the GTA area. In the meantime, a new online initiative - Together We Carry On, is a platform for youth to visit and contribute their unique voices about their everyday life. Summer is the best time to explore and be adventurous!

SHARP Program SHARP program is an after-school program that supports TDSB students.

During the pandemic, due to the limitations on physical programming, we moved the in-class sessions online. It is a challenge to both staff and students.

Online interaction is different from inperson interaction. In our previous inperson programs, we put a lot of emphasis on experiential learning with hands-on, physical activities. However, with being online, the focus shifted to more on self-reflection during the sessions.

Despite the changes, the limitation of being online has opened up new learning opportunities. On one hand, the students had more time to reflect on things that they did and to observe the changes that they made during this time. On the other hand, because the sessions were on Zoom, students are required more attention and patience to listen to other classmates presenting their own reflections and observations. As a result, the atmosphere that the students and the staff built together was conducive to self-learning and active listening. Even to some students, coming to our sessions, they felt that this space is a safe and supportive place to express themselves freely with no judgements. This makes the online session attractive to students joining us week in and week out.

City Mosaic Volunteer Sharing

Rocky Luo My first encounter with City Mosaic was in 2018 taking the role of an admin member. It was a fantastic experience where I got to oversee the roll-out of this urban adventure. When I was first invited

by Tiffany and Jason to be a marketing team member of CM 2021, I was both excited and nervous. I was hyped for the return of CM and also worried that this online format would pose unprecedented challenges, including less participation and different game rules. The marketing team definitely did exceptionally well to address these matters. We shot a promotion video with the purpose to evoke past experiences of CM and also attract new participants. To explain the online format and relevant rules, we captured the content with creative social media posts and setting up a live opening ceremony.

None of these obstacles could be overcome without a supportive and dynamic team - SHOUTOUT to Jason, Tiffany Ore, Hanson, Tiffany Jiang and Zara! There was nothing more important than having a determined mind and clear goals to tackle these challenges. And I can proudly say we nailed it! However, this is not the end of the story - stay tuned for more interesting content on our website or social media pages!

City Mosaic Volunteer Sharing

Tiffany Jiang It is an honour to be invited to join the marketing team for City Mosaic in this special year! I was excited because I was particularly curious about this year’s City Mosaic. I also looked forward to working with other members of the marketing team.

My first experience with City Mosaic began in 2017. That year, I participated in the 12th City Mosaic as a SHARP Program student. It was my first time exploring the city of Toronto in the form of a team competition. In addition to being a participant, I was also an administrative team helper and was responsible for the registration booth. It was a fulfilling day for me!

What surprises and excites me about this 2021 City Mosaic are the increase in the number of checkpoints and the way participants participate in City Mosaic through the Actionbound app.

Our marketing team has been working together to brainstorm and work to create an effective way to promote this first virtual City Mosaic. What impresses me is the promotional video that our marketing team brainstormed, compiled, filmed, edited, and released.

This promotional video shows our marketing team’s enthusiasm for promoting this first virtual City Mosaic.

Through this experience working in marketing to promote City Mosaic, I learned that an open mind, creative thinking, teamwork, the ability to adapt and coordinate changes, strategic planning and implementation will aid in promoting City Mosaic effectively. Most importantly, this year's experience makes me deeply recognize that hosting this first virtual City Mosaic is meaningful!

City Mosaic Volunteer Sharing

Zara Cheng My first experience with City Mosaic was back in 2019. I was a grade nine student who volunteered to help out in a tea tasting checkpoint located in Chinatown. Although I was not a participant, I was truly impressed by the teamwork and enthusiasm each team had shown in the challenges.

Working behind the scenes also allowed me to take a slower pace to observe the unique characteristics of the city I live in.

Being part of the City Mosaic 2021 marketing team and working with other members has been a great opportunity for me. This year’s City Mosaic was challenging initially since a lot of changes had to be made due to the pandemic. However, our leaders, Tiffany and Jason, demonstrated great leadership to guide our team through the obstacles we were facing. During these few months, I have learned to be more creative, especially coming up with ideas to promote our event through different platforms and media to the audience.

Making the promotion video with other members was memorable because our team spent a lot of time planning and put in our best work. I also enjoyed the experience of featuring one of the checkpoints in the promo video. I never knew the history and heritage of a local community, until I used a camera to capture down the features and read about it through the plaques. Overall, it was a very fun opportunity for me to promote City Mosaic in the midst of a pandemic. I hope our participants find our posts and videos helpful and enjoy City Mosaic this summer!

Together We Carry On Placement Student Sharing

Rodmond Tham I am a newly graduated student from the Social Service Work program at Seneca College. I had the opportunity to do my student placement at Across U-hub for two semesters. During my second semester, one of the main things that I worked on was one of Across U-hub's Instagram page called “Together We Carry On”. Of the many different posts that I created during my placement, one of my favourites is the one with a quote on the picture that says “to appreciate the sun, you have to know what rain is.” It is something that resonates with me and something I try to remind myself of daily as it is important to understand that setbacks and failures are part of life and necessary for growth.

A lot of my inspiration for the posts came from the things that I was experiencing and learning in my daily life. At the start of each week, I would reflect on things that I have been learning or things that have stood out to me and try to find a common theme in order to create posts for that particular week. Something I learned about myself from these posts is my ability to use personal examples from my daily life to help make the posts more relatable.

The impact that I would like to see these posts have is simply to evoke some sort of feeling and emotion, to make people think and reflect on their own lives. One of the best feelings is someone telling me that they really related to or resonated with what I said or how I was feeling.

If the work of Across U-hub has touched you in any way, please consider supporting us through donations. Your financial support will allow us to do more in supporting our youths.