Hello Winnipeg!
If you want to help, you can get at the AYO team tonight at the Bell Tower or anytime before the December 14th at 6pm at St Johns Cathedral ( the one beside St John’s Park, in the graveyard)! We will be sure to keep you up to date on the AYO/MM@BT Facebook pages!
A Free Community Concert!
PRESENTED BY: Got BANNOCK? & RBD Management.
Saturday, August 12, 2017
St. John’s Park, Main Street, Winnipeg, MB
Entertainment by:
***NCI LIVE ON LOCATION***
Children’s Activities/ Entertainment: 1PM-6PM
*FACE PAINTING* *BOUNCY CASTLE* *GAMES* *Community Resource Table*
Concert/Entertainment: 1PM-11PM
Free Lunch @2PM
Free Supper @8PM
As the weather heats up, so do activities within the AYO! Movement! This summer we will be hosting these 7 opportunities (there may be more) and will be debuting our first ever AYO Staff position for one lucky summer student!! Find below some upcoming upcoming opportunities for Indigenous youth:
AYO Politix & #PDvotes17 (Saturdays)
There is a provincial by election to replace MLA Kevin Chief in Point Douglas on June 13th 2017! That means AYO Politix (#politixBS) is meeting with individual candidates, recording Speed Rounds and working with other community groups to have an All Candidates Forum! Stay tuned to the AYO Politix Facebook Page to learn more! We will be asking the candidates to speak on local economic development, child welfare (See Fearless R2W) and Health (See our TOP 5 Health Policy list). Our festivities began on Sat May 20th, with Green Party’s Sabrina Koehn Binesi! Upcoming Brain Storm dates are below:
Meet Me at the Bell Tower (Fridays)
The MM@BT movement continues to meet Fridays at 6pm in cooperation with the Indigenous Family Centre and Food Not Bombs (and of course our relatives the Bear Clan gather at 6pm on the same corner). We look forward to welcoming consultations related to The Merchant’s Corner, a bell tower baby first birthday and a chance to explore both mental and community health!
Fearless R2W (Thursdays & 1 Saturday)
Fearless R2W is moving forward, we are about to release our re-vamped Community and Government Recommendations on our blog! We continue to meet Thursdays at Turtle Island Neighbourhood Centre at 510 King Street and are beginning the process for our first ever COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT FORUM. We will also be supporting the AYO Politix Candidate’s Forum and asking questions on child welfare.
Inner City Voices (Mondays)
Every Monday for the past 5 years, @northendmc has been hanging out on the CKUW airwaves with many of the other rowdies from AYO & the Village including Jenna Liiciious, Markus, Chris, Ninoondawah and many more! MC & Liiciious recently had a blast hosting the 11th Annual Volunteer Awards & Listener Appreciation Party for the CKUW family! We promote local musicians, especially hip hop, and are always looking for interesting and exciting ways to collaborate with inner city residents and groups as well as other shows on CKUW like Rogues Primate.
The Village Walk (Mondays)
Back by popular demand and now in it’s 3rd year, it’s the Village Walk! Brought to you by SpiritFusion, AYO!, Ma Mawi Chi Itata, Got Bannock? & more – The Village Walk provides a chance each lunch hour, on Mondays, to start your week with a walk around the community where we can explore the neighbourhood and get healthy together.
Youth Pipe Ceremonies (Saturdays)
We’re back for the 2nd year of weekly, summertime, street level youth led ceremony! We’ve already hosted 2 events at the North End Bell Tower and the Merchant’s Hotel. We are looking forward to supporting other events in the community where ceremony, and the streets can come together, in spaces where we can pray for families and express gratitude for the good things we have in our lives.
100 Basketballs (Family Fun Day in August)
For the past 3 years, #100Basketballs has provided inner city children and youth with free basketballs and a family fun day that featured basketball related give aways, food, entertainment, 3 on 3 basketball tournaments and more! This year, 100 Basketballs will happen in August and for the first time will be in the West End of Winnipeg. More details will be available soon!
There you have it! After 7 years of existing it is amazing to see how our volunteers and partner organizations continue to work together to make space in the village for community to be created. We have now shared 7 of our initiatives that you can get involved in this summer either by attending as a participant or getting involved as a helper. See you on the street!
Join the Meet Me at the Bell Tower Family as we come together on Friday October 14th and once more connect with our relatives from the Newcomer and Muslim communities with our WELCOME BACK event.
Last year we worked together with many groups and agencies and will be once more connecting with the several organizations within both the Muslim and newcomer community to celebrate all that we have in common. Please save the date and time of October 14th from 6pm to 8pm at the North End Bell Tower (470 Selkirk Avenue – the Indigenous Family Centre) and keep an eye on our facebook page for more announcements!
Link here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1085882861508137/
“The Guardians of Confederation” is a gathering of 2 students from each province/territory, plus 26 Island students, between the ages of 14 – 17 in Charlottetown, this November 20 – 23, to “Re-Imagine Canada.” Together the students will be asking and answering the question, “knowing what we know now, would we do it all over again and become a country called Canada?”
This will piggyback on the conference put on by the Association for Canadian Studies, details for which can be found here: http://www.acs-aec.ca/pdf/events/AEC_ReMakingConf_EN_V11_LR.pdf. There will be some overlap in the program of the two events, i.e., the Symons Medal Lecture with Stephen Lewis. (http://www.confederationcentre.com/en/symons-lecture-series.php) Mentors from UPEI will also be working with the students to guide them in their journey through this experience.
While there is interest from a number of potential students at the moment, only a few are confirmed just yet, so raise your hand if you’re interested, and we can talk details! I can’t promise there will still be a seat in your province or territory left, so if this pulls on the strings of your history loving heart, give us a shout sooner rather than later.
email: guardians@upei.ca
Last week, we met at MM@BT and discussed ways we as kids, parents and community members could keep children in the community safe. Check out the below list of ideas we have for PARENTS so they can keep their children protected from stranger danger:
STRATEGIES
HELPFUL LINKS FROM A COMMUNITY MAMA
Thanks to the Bannock Lady for sharing these helpful links with us – as parents we recommend you sit down and check these links out with your relatives and your own children so you can begin the discussion on how to best keep your child safe.
Younger Kids
Older Kids/Tweens
STRANGER DANGER SERIES
We originally asked the kids under 10 at the Bell Tower to work together and draw pictures of how they could be safe from ‘STRANGER DANGER’ and this was the result:
Naturally, we wanted to create real solutions and recommendations for our KIDS so find below the SAFETY TIPS from Bell Tower
VIDEO – FlouseyTube “KIDNAPPING CHILDREN EXPERIMENT”
(recommended by Victoria)
+++CLICK HERE FOR THE HOMELESS CHILD EXPERIMENT+++
STRANGER DANGER SERIES
This image was created by one of our 10 year old Bell ringers as a gift for us every week – something we could hold out to traffic and passers by so that they would know why we gather each Friday on Selkirk Avenue to ring a bell – to stop violence.
STRANGER DANGER
We recently experienced some “stranger danger” at the bell tower (read about it here) and wanted to get together for kids and families in the neighbourhood to talk about safety. We shared 3 different types of Strategic Streams, based on who was in attendance at the gathering – parents, community members and children directly. We had the adults have a discussion and share resources in word, and we engaged the kids through art and conversation as well.
The images of the rough notes are included we will be releasing these recommendations in 4 PARTS:
Stay tuned for the upcoming posts, and thanks to everyone who continues to support the local initiatives in our community that bring us together, get us talking to our neighbours and connecting us to our humanity, spirits and the earth. We are trying to rally as many supporters and resources as we can for this upcoming Bell Tower Friday July 25, 2014 SILENCE IS VIOLENCE. Please join us with your drums, medicines and voices, we’re gonna need the entire village for this one folks.
AYO!
In April of 2014, Adrian Acoby was murdered at the age of 25 in Winnipeg’s inner city in a domestic related dispute. The violence in the North End of Winnipeg in 2014 is affecting young people, and young people are taking action. The “Who Walks With The Buffalo Tour” In Honour of Adrian Acoby is an initiative of young people from the North End, reaching out to our peers in neighbourhood schools, and asking for their help to prevent further violence in the neighbourhood over the summer. From June 9th to 13th we are dedicating all of our North End speaking engagements to Adrian and inviting our community to Meet Me at the Bell Tower on Friday June 13th for a special community gathering.
Our main objective is to empower youth, to use their gifts and abilities to prevent violence and be a positive role model in the North End of Winnipeg
Who is Adrian – Who Walks With the Buffalo?
Adrian Acoby was a young Aboriginal man who was intelligent, funny with a demeanor and sense of humour that put his peers and fellow community members at ease. He was a community helper and was always the first to volunteer when an opportunity presented itself. Like many young people, Adrian was struggling with addictions and homelessness. He even turned his challenges into education for others volunteering in the 2013 CEO Sleepout with the Downtown BIZ alongside AYO!. That night, in 2013, Adrian went home with an AYO! Leadership member and had the feeling of a warm bed in the middle of his addictions and his own struggles with homelessness
Unfortunately, in April 2014 Adrian Acoby became one of 9 murders of the year in Winnipeg. In a year of violence for Aboriginal Youth and Winnipeg as a whole, the inner city was feeling the sting. There were many violent incidents in only the first 6 Months of the year. The most devastating event for us as a group involved Adrian, who at the age of 25, was involved in a domestic assault with another young women, known to us through community involvement, and became a victim of homicide. She is being charged with second degree murder. This trauma has hurt us beyond measure, and when we look back to the first months of 2014 and imagine what is coming this summer and in the next 6 months, we cannot help but remember 2011 the year when Winnipeg was the murder capital of Canada.
That’s why AYO says no more, and wants to invite North End students to share their gifts this summer, engage their friends in creative actions to bring on the peace and ultimately stop the violence. Let’s prevent violence from occurring by being pro active and looking out for each other. We’re doing this for Adrian and we need your help to make it happen.
MM@BT Facebook page:
http://www.fb.com/NorthEndBellTower
Official AYO Bell Tower web page:
http://www.ayomovement.com/mmbt.html
For more info or to book a presentation email:
mc@ayomovement.com
MM@BT was featured on APTN Investigates “A Look Back” episode on May 9th 2014. Our segment begins at 13:30!
http://aptn.ca/news/2014/05/12/look-back/
“Michael Champagne is a remarkable young man. He wanted to do something about the violence plaguing his crime-ridden Winnipeg neighbourhood. Instead of leaving it to the government and demanding more cops be hired, he and a bunch of Aboriginal youth did something. Their meetings at a bell tower in Winnipeg’s notorious North End is a youth-led grassroots movement to improve the quality of life. To hear more, here’s Part 1 & Part 2 of their story.”
Thanks to Josh Grummett & Todd Lamirande for putting this story together!
AYO! Movement - The Blog 