The girls at Stephan Leacock CC learning situational awareness

The girls at the Rexdale Hub learning about situational awareness

The girls at Success Beyond Limts, Jane Finch learning situational awareness

The youth at the Rexdale Hub learning how to escape hair grabs from the back

The youth at Stephan Leacock CC learning how to escape side choke holds

After 2 years of pandemic-related restrictions placed on Toronto recreation, we returned in-person with a fun dance and safety series under particiPACTION’s community better challenge.

In collaboration with AlbionBGC, L’amoreaux Community Center, Weston Frontlines, Success Beyond limits-JaneFinch, Agincourt Services, Rexdale Community Health Center, and our self-defense friends at Krav Maga Maleh Canada, we brought together over 75 youth living across 4 at-risk communities.

During our month-long workshop series, youth ages 7 to 19 yrs-old put down their phones and joined us for some fun dance warmups (Socacize, Bollywood, and Latin) and street-style self-defense sessions.

Youth gained awareness of potentially life-threatening situations and got the chance to practice escaping these situations in pairs. Participants were taught how to escape certain attacks such as wrist grabs, choke holds, back grab holds as well as knife and gun attacks. The instructor geared the workshops based on age group and demographic (girls-only/co-ed).

To ensure the workshop's success, all hosts and youth were consulted about the workshops and had a choice in part taking.

Key Highlights

All of the participants moved for at least 1.5 hours and met a part of their weekly exercise recommendations
Bot the hosts and participants enjoyed the workshops and expressed an interest in us returning again (both in our next series and through their own services)
Each workshop had between 10 to 20 participants in attendance (our goal was at least 8 per workshop)
All of the participants left with basic self-defense training and some expressed an interest in training further

If you’re an organization that is interested in bringing us in to get your group moving through a fun dance and self-defense workshop, please contact me here. Please do mention your ideas, demographic, location dates, and budget.