Students celebrate Pan Am Community Day - Thurs May 29th

 

Pan Am Community Ignite Day -- By Richelle Nelson, Student at Westview CSS

On May 29th, 2014, Generation Change initiated a ignite community day project in honour of the upcoming Pan American 2015 games coming to Toronto.  The events and planning leading up to the community day were quite hectic.  With the thoughts of the event swarming over our heads, we had to collaborate together to make sure that things ran smoothly.  To prepare for the event Generation Change from the three high schools scheduled monthly executive committee meetings which consisted of student representatives, teachers, administrators and community partners.  At these meetings we sat together and assembled lists and ideas that we created together to assemble the best community day ever.  Before we could even launch the day student volunteers from Generation Change spent endless hours making phone calls to our feeder schools, local politicians and sponsors to get the buzz out there surrounding our May 29th community day.

On the day and in the morning time, there were musical and athletic venues taking place at the three different sites including Westview, CWJ and Downsview .  I thought that all of the venues ran smoothly and that our morning programs were a success.  In the afternoon we all met at Westview for the closing ceremonies on our outdoor stage.  I was also one of the MCS along with Sherry and Quinn from Downsview.  We engaged the crowd for the afternoon.  During the closing ceremonies some of the highlights included Pachi the mascot for the games, the medal presentation for all of the athletes, the professional Pan Am boxer - Natalie Brown Johnson  and the live entertainment from Just B Graphics and Westview's vocal students.

 

Pan Am Games makes students proudMy name is Sherry Persaud and I'm proud to say that I was a part of the Generation Change executive committee for the planning of the Pan Am Ignite project. This Pan Am community day was held at our three high schools, Downsview, CWJ and Westview for the morning activities of music, dance, athletics and other workshops. My home school Westview hosted the closing ceremonies and I had the pleasure of being one of the master's of ceremonies. Generation Change is a program and partnership that runs at CWJ, Downsview and Westview where starting in September of 2013 we worked all year long to plan for this day.  I have to say, it was a lot of work and pretty stressful.  But in the end it was an amazing success.  In addition to students, teachers and administrators from the three high schools we also worked with community partners like SBL- success beyond limits - Toota Hassanien and Just B Graphics - Kayode Brown. Overall it was an awesome day and think community days should be part of every day.

Dance Rock and Song

Sports with Medals

 

and..... BBQ.....Yum Yum