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.
And the kids each came home with a nice swag bag.:)
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.
We had over 20 items people could choose from to make their own trail mix. Everything from peanuts and pretzels to dried fruit, popcorn, Goldfish, granola, Whoppers, M&Ms, coconut ...
It was a really big hit, and the recipients felt very appreciated. :)
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.
Next, we have classical pianist Pikachu!
And last but not least, was "Smokemon," because the date she was doing the drawings was 4/20, and that is a 'holiday' in the marijuana smoking 'community.'
She also made a Minion into Mario, of Nintendo Bros. fame.
