The students of the Advocacy and Events Planning team carried out a project to assist the students at PTP with signing up for the Toronto Parks and Recreation programs in September.

We first taught the students how to use the Fun Guide. The Fun Guide is the parks and recreation guide to programs and services for people in multiple districts in the GTA. Next we had to navigate the difficult application. We had to determine which guide to use according to the districts the students lived in. There were colours representing each district. For example, the green represents Etobicoke, the purple North York and so on. Some of the courses required phone calls to verify whether they were available in the community centre near the applicants. We also helped the students determine what courses they wanted to take and the community centre nearest to them in their districts. Then we filled out a Welcome Policy application for the courses and programs that are not free. The Welcome Policy is a policy that waives fees for low income individuals for courses and programs that were not free. The students decided whether they would take the course alone or with their families.

The Parks and Recreation sign up gave the students of PTP an opportunity to become informed about the resources at their disposal. These programs allow them to spend time with their families in an economical way. They promote healthy life styles, development of skills and continuous learning. For instance, engagement in the learning to sew program and Spanish classes are typical examples of where students can develop new skills. The students who signed up for the health club and yoga are indulging in the healthier life styles. The students were able to access these resources through Parks and Recreation programming.

Organizing this project gave the members of the Advocacy and Events Planning Team an opportunity to improve our communication and leadership skills. We learned effective teaching skills as well. The team discovered that the Fun Guide and the resources were not being utilized because the Fun Guide is a very complicated magazine. The process is almost impossible to figure out; many programs of interest had fees attached but students were uninformed of the Welcome Policy and how it works.

As a team we discovered that lack of knowledge was a curse to the students but the act of helping and transferring information was priceless.

by Surnet M.