Yumi Onozawa, Manager of Youth Programs, was invited as an ambassador to the finale of Canada’s Diversity Advantage/Advantages de la diversité au Canada, a youth festival organized by the United Nations Association in Canada/Association canadienne pour les Nations Unies, which took place on March 8th at the Sunset Community Centre. The festival brought together 200 youth (grades 5–8) from across the Lower Mainland to explore how our history of diversity has shaped Canada today and how we can continue to build friendly and welcoming communities.
Yumi spoke about MOSAIC’s work and answered many questions from the youth who were curious about newcomers’ experiences. Yumi also facilitated Sculpture, a NuYu activity, which utilizes Popular Theatre techniques to engage the audience as active collaborators of the story unfolding on-stage. During the activity, an actor articulated a still pose and the youth were invited to pinpoint the emotion being portrayed. In Yumi’s words: “The youth were able to ‘stand in the shoes of the actor’. They became more aware of how emotions are linked to the body and could also explore what situations could have given rise to these feelings. From there, the youth could explore how they themselves would react in such situations or how we can be more aware about our roles in creating similar situations for others.”
Through theatre exercises and games in MOSAIC’s NuYu program, participants gradually create scenes which reflect their personal life challenges. The program creates a space for youth to collectively come up with positive solutions to the challenges presented in the scenes by their peers.
