Youth 4

Joulie is 12. She arrived in Quebec last winter with her family and thousands of other Syrian refugees. In temperatures of -20°C, Joulie and 69 other young newcomers to Canada experienced their first winter camp with the Scouts from the Notre-Dame-de-l'Annonciation parish in Pierrefonds.

Aiming to give youth important first aid and injury prevention skills, the Canadian Red Cross has updated its Youth program to give youth greater confidence in caring for themselves and others. Stay Safe! is a new course designed for youth aged 9 to 13 years, in order to provide skills and knowledge to increase their confidence in staying safe on their own.

The Canadian Red Cross partnered with the University of Saskatchewan, College of Nursing to deliver CRC’s Respect Education curriculum, focused on healthy youth relationships. 

When watching or reading the news it isn’t hard to see the impacts of war and armed conflicts, seeing this kind of suffering and destruction can lead us to ask if there are any rules or limits to violent armed conflict  – that’s where International Humanitarian Law comes in.
 

As part of the Canadian Red Cross Healthy Youth Relationships curriculum, Saskatchewan runs two youth symposiums with the goal of empowering youth with leadership skills so that they are better equipped to serve their schools and communities.  We caught up with 14-year-old Olivia Scrimshaw, a student in Saskatoon, to find out what the symposium meant to her.

Students today are bombarded with images and headlines of humanitarian crises. The Syrian refugee crisis and violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) around the world have made humanitarian education in the classroom more relevant than ever. The Canadian Red Cross offers Exploring Humanitarian Law Educator Trainings to teachers across the country, where participants learn the basic rules of International Humanitarian Law, also known as the law of armed conflict.

UNA-Canada’s Sport-in-a-Box program was developed in 2005 with the intention of using sport to combat discrimination and racism. Since then, the program has spread to communities across Canada, including Fort McMurray in February 2016. However, plans to expand Sport-in-a-Box to other youth-serving organizations in Fort McMurray were put on hold after the program lost its materials, and resources on the ground, to the wildfires in May.

The Canadian Red Cross is recognizing our 120^th anniversary through a new online platform. The project, celebrating 120 years of helping those in need, highlights important moments in our history through significant events and stories displayed on an interactive timeline.  Last week, I had the opportunity to sit down with veteran Red Cross volunteer, Ted Itani, to talk about Red Cross history and one item in particular that connects our Red Cross stories: a model landmine.