“Nasty.” “Disgusting.” “She’s your godsister? You have to talk sense into her!”

A minute inside Natasha Burford’s classroom, listening to the chatter, all my residual girlhood insecurities ache. I remember acutely how hard it is to be a teenage girl.

The class is part of a camp for girls, aged 10-14. Three are leading a session on social networking from the front of the room. They’ve posted the two female archetypes on the blackboard — one posing seductively in booty shorts, the other in a turtleneck clutching a Bible. Their point is not to judge a book by its cover. But also, the cover is important.
After the facilitators leave, Burford gets up from behind her desk. “Do you know how old those facilitators are?” she asks. “They’re 13 and 14.”

Eyes widen. That’s younger than many of the girls in the room. And they’re already facilitators?

“That’s why they’re called aspiring leaders,” Burford says. “They’re aspiring to be leaders in their own community.”

Burford is the force behind a small non-profit in Jane-Finch called WORCIT — Women of Race Climbing It Together. Its main project is a 10-month “aspiring leaders” program for 13- to 17-year-old girls in the neighbourhood. It is equal parts girly sleepovers and motherly heart-to-hearts, and includes leadership workshops on things like financial planning and public speaking, and enriching experiences, from spending a weekend in University of Toronto dorm rooms to visiting Uncle Tom’s cabin in Chatham. To graduate, all the girls have to lead workshops, like this one today.

“I want them to have that sense of entitlement — that they could do anything they want,” says Burford, 33. “I want them to dream as high as possible, and then achieve that.”The program is Burford’s small solution to the merry-go-round of violence many ride in her neighbourhood.

“All these boys being murdered in the neighbourhood,” Burford says, reflecting. “I had been waiting for someone to do something. When she came, I thought ‘I can’t wait anymore.’”

Her action: an email to friends and fellow recent teachers college grads asking for help coordinating “Toronto’s First Black Women’s Leadership Conference.” Responses came and the next spring they pulled it off, drawing 200 people to hear keynote speaker Jean Augustine, the former Liberal MP.

The mentorship was a natural progression, for what real changes could come from a weekend conference? They chose girls, Burford says, because that is what they knew best. And in addressing youth violence, girls are often overlooked.

“The decision-makers are often men. Women often suffer, but don’t take an active role to find solutions,” says Tatiana Fraser, executive director of the Girls Action Foundation, a national charity working to build girls’ leadership. “What Natasha is doing is brilliant.”

That summer, they kicked off the aspiring leaders program with a month-long girls’ camp. Burford pulled every string she could find, hiring teacher friends, bringing her financial planner to talk money matters, persuading her mom to lead cooking classes. Next month, three young graduates from the program will help lead this summer’s camp.

By Catherine Porter
Columnist
The Toronto Star, July 27 2010

On June 24th, over 160 students, staff and community attended Centennial College's very own LIVE G20 Shadow Summit at the Progress Campus Student Centre Main Events Hall. Six student teams were selected to represent different nations: Aghanistan, Canada, India, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Each team presented on major issues challenging our global economy in addition to ideas on how to solve them. The audience then voted for the team who presented the best solutions, based on set criteria.

And the winner is….

Team India! Team members Imtiyaz Kutub and Anukul Sharma developed a dynamic presentation answering the complex question: Should governments be responsible for bailing out corporations who have wrongfully mismanaged their resources? Imitiyaz and Anukul stole the show with thier knowledge, humour and engaging the crowd to think critically about their topic. Team India managed to convince the majority of the crowd to agree with their ideas to support corporations stating that our global economy would breakdown if we didn’t and their would be severe consequenses.

Each student of Team India went home with a Netbook, Team Sri Lanka our 2nd place winners each received an iPod and 3rd place went to Team Canada who recieved a gift certificates to our bookstore. Congratulations to all of our winners and all who participated.

All of the teams did an amazing job at highlighting the issues affecting our global world. For more pictures and info from the event click on the G20 Shadow Summit Blogs.