Peer support is sort of my jam, it is something I feel knowledgeable and very passionate about.
It began back in 2014 when I got the opportunity to volunteer as a Peer Counselor at the Peer Support Centre during my undergraduate studies. After I completed graduate school, I landed a position working as a Youth Engagement Project Coordinator for a children’s mental health hospital to create a peer-based mental health program for youth in the community.
At the peak of the proliferation of smartphones and social media and the attention economy, our attention has become the most valuable commodity. In order to profit from our attention, companies employ tactics to hijack our attention and keep us glued to our smartphones, scrolling mindlessly through our newsfeeds and watching cat memes all day long. According to some statistics:
Digital Wellness is a movement that seeks to establish a holistic and unified approach to tackling the challenges and issues faced by individuals, and society at large, at the proliferation of the attention economy. The movement seeks a “fight fire with fire” approach by using tactics such as creating apps that help us manage the amount of time we spend on our digital activities. Continue reading “Digital wellness for beginners”
Happy New Year!
One of my major goals for the new year is to be consistently productive and work on advancing my career as a youth worker, writing more for my blog, and creating more opportunities to grow professionally and personally. #CareerGoals!
Youth workers provide a vital service to young people and the communities that they serve, and studies show that one of the best indicators for job satisfaction is finding work that helps others.
RESOURCE: 80000hours.org provides career advice for people who want to have a social impact.
Given the nature of citizenship, and it historical, social and political contentions, there remains a lack of consensus on what constitutes citizenship. The legal definition of citizenship defines the term as the position or status of being a citizen of a particular country, with elements such as a passport, or a national identity.
However, citizenship can also be conceptualized as a process that gives ways to relations of power and inequality within a given society that is “contingent upon the subordination of specific bonds of gender, race, class,” which shape the experience of the individual citizen. [1] In short, citizenship is the individual’s relationship with the wider society; it claims who belongs where, who has obligations, who benefits from rights, and who is entitled to services. [3]
Continue reading “Youth citizenship: An intersectional analysis”
“Meaningful youth engagement is an inclusive, intentional, mutually-respectful partnership between youth and adults whereby power is shared, respective contributions are valued, and young people’s ideas, perspectives, skills, and strengths are integrated into the design and delivery of programs, strategies, policies, funding.” – YouthPower Continue reading “Meaningful youth engagement: Multiple contexts, multiple realities, multiple approaches”
Historically, the primary focus of youth work has been on risk prevention and rehabilitation, such as delinquency and drug addiction, and to keep youth off the streets, known as a person-centered approach. [3] Such an approach has led to service providers to regard young people as problems requiring a solution or intervention. Continue reading “Critical youth work”
What do you need to do when an online platform intended for professional networking and growing your career turns into a nuance to your everyday life?
You need to cut it.
My disdain for social media continues to grow more and more each day. I am completely, albeit a bit alarmingly, obsessed with the idea of living a social media free life. It is a personal revolution to opt out, to actively choose to check out from ‘the noise’ of online platforms and cultivate life on one’s own terms.
After deleting my Facebook account back in 2012, my Instagram and Snapchat in 2013, and my Twitter account in 2017, LinkedIn was my last standing social media account until very recently.
Continue reading “Minimizing ‘the noise’: Why I deleted my LinkedIn account”
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