Fun at our 1st Kid's Trick or Treat Safety Series

Kids trick or treat dance & safety session at Project XGuard BJJ

Kids trick or treat dance & safety session at the Toronto Libraries

Fun at Our 1st Kid's Trick or Treat Safety Series

By: Sumera Garcia-Quadri

There are more child-pedestrian injuries on Halloween night than on any other holiday night. With that in mind, I thought it would be the perfect time to run an age-appropriate dance and safety series for kids ages 6 to 12. In the past 5 years, our series has focused on getting youth ages 12 to 18 who live in under-resourced areas with high gun violence rates to move more and feel safer as they walk around their neighborhoods and take the transit.

Through the generosity of the Toronto Arts Council and Coaches Ontario, our series got over 50 kids dancing, crafting Halloween masks, and learning about street safety (what many martial artists call “situational awareness”). After dance and crafts, we used group games and chats to teach kids how to be ALERT and SEEN while walking on the street at night and after school, and how to use their voice (words) and body (distance and posture) to protect themselves from any potentially unwanted contact or scary situations.

Our sessions were hosted by the Toronto Public Libraries in Rexdale and Scarborough Central, Project Xguard BJJ in North Scarborough, and Flemingdon Health Center in East York.

To see what we did, please click on the clips in this blog.

I cannot wait to return in 2025 with another safety series in the Spring and Fall.

Sumera