{"id":61484,"date":"2017-11-23T06:00:04","date_gmt":"2017-11-23T10:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.familyfuncanada.com\/halifax\/?p=61484"},"modified":"2017-12-06T12:34:53","modified_gmt":"2017-12-06T16:34:53","slug":"we-day-atlantic-empowering-youth-create-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.familyfuncanada.com\/halifax\/we-day-atlantic-empowering-youth-create-change\/","title":{"rendered":"We Day Atlantic: Empowering Youth to Create Change","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"
\"WE

Source: WE Day Facebook<\/p><\/div>\n

Question:<\/strong> What is WE Day? Is it a school trip, a concert, a movement, a fundraising event, a trend?<\/p>\n

Answer:<\/strong> all of the above.<\/p>\n

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The WE movement <\/a>was founded more than 20 years ago by social entrepreneurs, Craig and Marc Kielburger<\/a> as a volunteer travel program.\u00a0Later, it evolved\u00a0into a sophisticated social enterprise: a collaboration between a fundraising arm (called ME to WE) and the original charity: the WE Charity.<\/p>\n

In 2007, the first WE Day event was held at the Ricoh Colleseum in Toronto, where about 7,500 youth listened to inspirational peakers such as Justin Trudeau, Senator Romeo Dallaire, Irshad Manji, Jessi Cruikshank and Olympic swimmer\u00a0Mark Tewksbury.\u00a0There was entertainment too, with\u00a0Canadian Idol<\/i>\u00a0winner\u00a0Brian Melo\u00a0and\u00a0Hanson. The event was broadcast across Canada via a live webcast produced by MTV.<\/p>\n

Since then, the WE movement has exploded into a global movement for social change. There are 19 events in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K., attended annually by 200,000 students from over 10,000 schools. with thousands of people watching online and on TV.<\/p>\n

It has been described at the world’s largest empowerment movement.<\/p>\n

WE Day is always free to attend for students and educators, thanks to the support of \u00a0corporations like RBC<\/a> and <\/span>Telus<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Telus<\/p>\n

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But you can’t \u00a0buy a ticket to WE Day. You earn your way in by becoming involved with the WE Schools<\/a> program.<\/p>\n

It works like this:\u00a0A\u00a0volunteer teacher at school leads a group of students through the program, supported by WE. The group meets \u00a0at lunchtime or after school, they decide on what global and local action it will take, and follows the project through, over the course of the school year. The teacher and students are supported through the process with resources and materials from WE.<\/p>\n

Since 2007, youth involved in WE Schools have achieved the following results:<\/p>\n