Crave – Busy of Late
Hey everyone in the CWYC. We have been very busy lately doing some awesome and unique events in our community.
On March 26, 2008, Crave took to the ice at Joshua’s Creek Arena in Oakville, partnering with the Oakville Blades and the Halton Council on Smoking or Health. Our goal was to raise awareness of the province-wide Powerwall ban that comes into effect on May 31, 2008. Armed with pucks and hockey sticks, Peer Leader Marc Dales and volunteer Lucas Shoenfeldt took shots at a mock Powerwall, symbolically showing that youth have the power to fight big tobacco.
On Saturday April 5th, 2008, Crave recreated the Grave Reality tomb stones event from 2007 to illustrate the number of people that die in different countries each day because of Tobacco Industry Products. We used this event to spread this message and further introduce ourselves to the Milton community. Overall it was highly successful and many community members and youth signed the graffiti wall to share their thoughts on the tobacco industry.
On Saturday April 19th 2008, Crave participated in the annual World Wildlife Fund CN Tower climb to raise awareness about the negative effects of tobacco industry products on the environment. Consider the following facts:
- One in five items littered is a cigarette butt
- 600 million trees are destroyed annually just to dry tobacco
- On average, a tree is cut down to roll and package every 300 cigarettes.
To get to the top of the CN Tower, you must first make it up the 1174 steps which translates to 144 flights of stairs. Our times ranged from 16 minutes to 50 minutes, but we were happy that our entire group of 20 peer leaders made it up to the top. This was a fund raising event for the World Wildlife Foundation and we are proud to have raised $1735 over all for a good cause.
On April 24th, Crave participated in the ‘Choice is Yours’ conference which was held at the Meeting House in Oakville. This conference was run by High School Students in Halton Region and focuses on educating teens about safer partying. Crave had a presentation relating to the themes of the conference – Be Informed, Protect Your Friends, and Make Your Own Decisions – which we related back to the tobacco industry and how it targets youth. We had a great turnout and lots of youth participated in the event.
We are looking forward to catching up with most of you at Take Action!
By: Marc Dales
REACT UPDATE
Hello CWYC, in the last two months REACT has accomplished a lot. At the beginning of March we set up a booth at an Ice Dogs game, our local OHL team from Niagara. The purpose of the event was to raise awareness on the power wall takedown on May 31st. Also, we had lots of media at this event we were featured in two articles and our very own Pola was the main focus of a Thorold Niagara News article. The next big event REACT was a part of was setting up booths at our local Y-Dances. The theme of the Y-Dance displays was “mad science”; our booth had displays of the various chemicals found in tobacco industry products.
The next event REACT hosted was our annual Niagara Youth Tobacco Summit which had approximately 180 students show up to. This event was held for high school students from Niagara with an interest in Tobacco prevention. We were fortunate enough to have excellent speakers such as Trevor Hache and Matthew Cutler at our event, as well as a media panel with local newspaper representatives. It was a huge success and we look forward to next year’s big event!
At the end of this month we are concluding our two year Don’t Be A Number campaign. It has been a great success, as well as a great opportunity to get into the high schools and get our name out into the community.
It’s been fun, until next time. Peace
REACT
Crave – February we hardly knew you
Crave was very busy this February planning our Valentine’s Day event. We took our key messages to EC Drury High School in Milton, Iroquois Ridge in Oakville, Christ the King in Georgetown and Robert Bateman in Burlington. Crave put up posters in schools comparing candy sticks to cigarettes and said, “The tobacco industry starts recruiting at a young age. Does this leave you broken-hearted?” On February 14, Crave members set up booths in their schools and inviting youth to sign pledges stating that they would not “give their hearts away” to the tobacco industry. We received hundreds of signatures from youth who planned to adamantly oppose the tobacco industry’s marketing practices. At Robert Bateman, our peer leaders counted over 175 pledges! Despite some obstacles, our event was a huge success.
Peer Leaders also took the OTRU online course. They received certification after passing a test trying their knowledge of the course material. We feel a whole lot smarter now!
For the Take!Action Conference, Crave has planned an awesome photo shoot that will take place next week. We won’t tell you too much…all we can say is that it’ll be an exciting experience for those involved. Andrei, one of our Peer Leaders, attended the planning weekend in February for the Conference and had a great time. We’re all looking forward to it in May!
Crave has also began planning for some amazing April events – Kick Butts Day and a ‘party in the right spirit’ youth workshop in Oakville called ‘The Choice Is Yours Conference’.
March was full of time off of work with March Break and Easter. We are working with the Halton Council on Smoking or Health to do a Hockey Powerwall event with the OTN. Look for a full report of that in our next post! Oh and Happy Birthday to our Youth Advisor Dan – he turned 27 years young in March!
