EMPOWERED: On Saturday, from 9 to 4:30 p.m., CJ and Annabelle had the opportunity to participate in Seattle Youth Empowerment Day. It was hosted by the Museum of History and Industry, in South Lake Union. When I saw a promo for it, I didn't hesitate to sign them up.
I'll let the kid tell you a bit more about the experience. Annabelle is up first.
Youth Empowerment Day at MOHAI was an event for middle and high schoolers about lots of different social topics. The first event featured the final 2 poets in the Seattle Grand Slam poetry slam. They each performed the 3 poems that lead them to representing Seattle in the San Francisco poetry slam! The first three (perform by a man named Mercury) were about how people with Autism are treated like objects and are taught to smile and not oppose anyone. The second poet was a black woman who had a poem about how she’d like to see marvel make a female black superhero called “Afro-woman” and how she’d handle herself and not need a man or a sidekick. She talked about how at the end of the movie, she’d want to see Afro-woman stand with an army of other black women behind her, so that they’d never be forgotten again.
Other events included presentations by organizations like Seattle Foundation, Give Big, Storytellers for Change, and the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life. They talked about volunteering and how to get the word out about issues you care about. During lunch, there was an activity fair where a few charities and organizations like Teen Feed, which provides food and shelter for homeless teens; Redeeming Soles, which takes donations of new shoes to give to less fortunate people; and Days for Girls, which provides reusable feminine hygiene products to girls who can’t access them in stores. The activity fair was basically just walking around and collecting stamps for a “passport”. The last workshop was about our table groups coming up with our own community projects. The winner was a group who was going to make a women’s self-defense course called “G-fence”. They even won 1,000 dollars to make their plan a reality! The Youth Empowerment Day was fun and educational, too!
And here's what CJ had to say. ...
On Saturday, my sister & I attended the annual Seattle Youth Empowerment Day, an event held at the Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI) since 2015. As described on the official webpage for the event, "During this day-long event, teens will learn strategies for making an impact on issues that matter to them through engaging workshops, hands-on activities, inspiring guest speakers, and will even have the chance to win $1,000 in startup capital to launch their own non-profit organization!"
At the event, of of the first things we did with the other teens was participate in a strange sort of icebreaker. We would each write some info about us on a sheet of paper (our names, preferred pronouns, favorite color, favorite animal, and grade), crumple the sheet of paper into a ball, and then throw the paper into a circle that we had formed. We would then pick up the piece paper that was nearest to us, and find which student it matched.
In the icebreaker, a pink-haired boy named Michael got my piece of paper and traced it back to me. I ended up with a piece of paper that belonged to "Louise" (or some other name along the lines of that), a girl who was slightly older than me.
One of the first actual events at the Youth Empowerment Day was a presentation by Youth Speaks, an organization dedicated to poetry written by youths. The first person from Youth Speaks to present was Mercury Sutherland, an autistic transman and poet. In his poem, Sutherland drew awareness to the large amount of hate crimes directed towards transgender people, as well as decried "Tumblr self-diagnosis" (most likely referring to the large amount of Tumblr users who self-diagnose with mental illness).
Seattle Youth Empowerment Day 2017 was a very informative and interesting event.
MIX IT UP: This week is Teacher Appreciation week where CJ and Annabelle take some classes. To show our appreciation, we helped set up a trail mix bar in a small office there.
We had an outdoors/trail hiking theme, and decorated the doorway with boughs cut down from our cedar tree yesterday. The kids helped make signs for the event and helped set up, as well.
COLORFUL: Today's random share is from over a week ago. We were at a restaurant and Annabelle found several black and white coloring sheets. She proceeded to make several versions of Pikachu, of the game Pokemon.
First up was unicorn Pikachu.
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