january update 2008 of TOXIK
Toxik’s – January update
Toxik’s Breath Easy Awards event was a huge success around the region. The event was jointly hosted by Toxik and Y-Act. At the ceremony fourteen businesses and organizations around the region were awarded for taking a positive step in tobacco control in the community. The award ceremony was held in Kitchener at one of the regional buildings on December 4, 2007. Toxik was successful in getting a lot of media attention at the ceremony.
Toxik also received replies for the two letters that the peer leaders wrote to the government organizations. One of the letters was sent to the Grand River Transit concerning about the amount of second hand smoke at the terminal platforms. The Grand River Transit was thankful to Toxik for bringing their attention to this issue and showed interest in making a change towards it. Another letter was sent to Service Canada concerning about the bursary provided by Tobacco industry for disabled youth. The reply from Service Canada also showed interest in taking a positive step towards this issue.
Toxik is also planning to set a display booth at Conestoga Mall on January 25, 2008 in the National Non-Smoking Week. This educational booth will be about the Tobacco industry manipulation and their tactics towards youth and general public. It will also include information on Toxik, our past and present events and how to get involved with our group.
This will be all for this month, to read more about our success wait for the next update!
Y-ACT’s January update!
Helloooooo CWYC,
This is Tim from Y-ACT and we have had a very busy and cool couple of months. Just very recently we finished up an awesome event with our new giant cigarette costumes, “Smokey the Butt” and “Cigarella Le KIll”. It was a photoshoot event at the Cambridge mall where youth could have their pictures taken and then emailed out to them or they could sign a giant fabric banner and put their handprint to show that they would not be tricked by the tobacco industry. This event had great results with over 80 pictures throughout the week and many youth reached with our message. We also had some great media attention from the Cambridge Times (apart from a misquote that says $5-6 million instead of $5-6 billion LOL) Here is the link if you are interested…
http://www.cambridgetimes.ca/news/article/115125
Overall it was a very successful and very popular event and giant costumes are definitely an excellent way to get youth’s attention!
We also are finally getting ready for our first middle school presentations at the beginning of February. This presentation has been in the works for nearly 2 years and we are all excited to finally get it on the road. We will be educating youth about the tobacco industry and the health effects of tobacco industry products while at the same time making it fun with an awesome skit and games.
We also have many other events in the planning process including a sports day and many other cool events.
Another successful event from December that was very successful were ourBreathe-Easy awards. Many businesses were presented with awards for their contributions in helping their employees quit smoking, limiting tobacco use on their property, and reducing their powerwalls, as well as some other great tobacco-free initiatives. This was another long-term event that everybody in Y-ACTand TOXIK was very excited to complete.
So that is it for this month from Y-ACT. See everyone at the February meeting!,
Y-ACT
Crave: January Exam Edition
Hey everyone, we’re Crave from Halton Region. We’ve had a very exciting past 2 months, which included the Crave Christmas party, Holiday Carolling with Crave and the CWYC Press Conference.
To start off, Jen, Peter and Danielle went to the Hamilton Convention Center with the Central West Youth Coalition for the Convention of the Rights of a Child. They joined the rest of the CWYC to give Chris Charlton (MP) the petition that the group created in the summer. Also, Danielle and Peter presented to the group along with Alyssa from Guelph. There was a lot of news coverage from Channel 14 news.
Next came the Carolling with Crave. We hit the streets of Downtown Oakville on a Saturday afternoon in December to spread the message that we are in support of Bill 11. This provincial Private Members bill would ban smoking in cars carrying children. We wore our T-shirts that said “Happy Holidays from Crave. The chimney should be the only thing smoking around the kids this holiday!” We had a great response from the community for our advocacy efforts and encouraged everyone to contact his/her local MPP.
To celebrate the holidays (and a well-deserved 2 week break) we had a party here at work! A full turkey dinner with all the trimmings was served and it was delicious. We had a ‘stealing’ secret Santa activity that showed the truth – some Peer Leaders (and Youth Advisors) are really good at plotting and scheming. We also held a food drive for our local Salvation Army. Congrats to Sarah for bringing in over 20 food items from her family’s cupboards.
January is a pretty quiet month because we’re taking off a lot of time to study for our exams. We’re getting ready for some solid events happening over the next few months such as Kick Butts Day and an amazing Valentine’s Day event. Peace
Reveal’s January Update
(just in case you missed it in ‘Comments’)
Here at Reveal, we have been very busy over the past month and a half. In December, we held out third annual Stop Don’t Start Smoke Free Contest. We had approximately 250 contestants, and 40 of which were smoking individuals. This is our highest rate of smokers we’ve ever had enter the contest!
We have also handed out 5000 cessation magazines. From these magazines, we have received a lot of positive feedback. This has made us feel very good about our work, and has encouraged us to do another magazine. So, we are now working on a second magazine about Tobacco Industry Denormalization.
We plan on conducting a survey in partnership with the enforcement team at the health unit in high schools about where youth buy their cigarettes. We want to include the information from this survey in our magazine and create an article around it.
We are also currently working on our March break presentations. We have done these presentations for the past 3 years and we think they are very effective prevention message to elementary aged children.
For National Non-Smoking Week, we have distributed creative radio announcement about the power wall ban to all the high schools in Brant County to be played during the morning announcements.
Our big project right now is planning a dance for pre-teen aged kids in partnership with Cyberzone. This dance will be for those between the ages of 10 and 15. We will educate the youth about the Tobacco Industry using our millionaire game, tobacco wheel, and elimination draw.
That’s it for now from REVEAL
DETOX’s January Newsletter (By Amanda Christie, Peer Leader)
Greetings from DETOX!
November was a great month for us! We had a great time at the Great Wolf Lodge training, and learned a great deal of valuable information that will help us in the future: how to target the tobacco industry, how to talk to the media about our fantastic events, and how interesting that no matter how little sleep Peer Leaders get, they can always muster up enough energy to enjoy water parks and arcades!
DETOX planned various events for ACTION Week in mid-November. These included the Stupid.ca campaign (names of chemicals found in cigarettes posted in the windows of our high school) and our Big Black Box with a very effective professional-quality slide show emphasising the risk of cigarettes. DETOX sure got people’s attention: copious amounts of swag got handed out, Smokey was a great success, and our opponents got angry enough to make their own posters.
At long last, our smoke-fx page is now up and running! Check it out to see who we are, what we’re up to, and facts we feel are important for youth to know about the tobacco industry.
DETOX celebrities? You bet! Some members from our group recently got their opinion heard on a CBC Radio Ontario Today program on chew and spit tobacco.
We are currently working on a smoke-free vehicles event to be run at our local arena with the cooperation of our town’s Junior C hockey team. We are also gearing up for Through With Chew Week in February! For Through With Chew we’re hoping to do some presentations to middle school students and collect postcards asking the provincial government to ban the sale of chew in Ontario.
Keep kicking ash,
DETOX
Click here to see a photo from our ACTION Week Event… DETOX’s Big Black Box Debut
Start Blogging!
All YAA’s now have usernames and passwords for the CWYC newsletter. Please remember that we agreed that each YAA would post an article at least once every 2 months. If you want to write and post articles more often, feel free!
If there are any questions, let me know.
Dan.
