Here in the GTA, forced marriages are known to affect women and girls, and also men and boys born in Canada, as well as those born abroad, IRRESPECTIVE of ETHNICITY, RELIGION, CULTURE, or SEXUALITY. The Forced Marriage Project (FMP) of Agincourt Community Services Association invites you to participate in FREE training for service providers on the …
Starting back in March 2013, the Laidlaw Foundation granted funds to the I do! Project to create an eye opening and informative online public service announcement. The I do! Project set out to shed light on the unspoken issues and incidents of forced marriage that have taken place right here in Toronto, through collaborations …
Film-screening Event On Sunday, Feb 3rd we had a private film-screening event at Dorset Park Community Hub where we all got to see our documentary The Right is Ours. While waiting for others, we also got to watch some youtube videos (mostly by Lily Singh, who also goes by the name ‘Superwoman.’ This was fun …
We are at the end of our road and there are no words to express how much growth and accomplishment has been made these past 7 weeks. This week, we used our time to perform and perfect different pieces we have been working on. As a group we decided on a date to come …
Our fifth workshop started with the group working on our headline pieces. After some rehearsing, we performed our work to the class and received feedback and suggestions. The headline pieces were very effective because they were a reflection of real stories. We then had a discussion about forced and arranged marriage. Forced marriage is when …
On the seventh day of our workshop, we went through the specifics of forced and arranged marriages. One of the ways we went through it was through discussion, we all talked about what we learned through the past few weeks, and what we thought of the topic before. Afterwards we talked about what signs were for someone …
Three weeks together and we are finally starting to become comfortable with each other. This week we split into two groups to work on separate pieces. Each group worked together to produce material and some used pieces from our previous free writing. We each brainstormed different ways to perform effectively. Emotion, pace of speech and …
Our fifth workshop introduced the discussion about consent and how it relates to relationships. Some of the participants knew what the word ‘consent’ was but we still went over a definition to make sure everyone understood. Then we talked about dating practices and looked a recent graph from a study that showed that young women …
The second series of Spoken Word workshops began as young women ages 17-24 joined Sheniz Janmohamed to learn spoken word and to present forced marriage related issues through this performance art. We started the session with introductions and our experience with spoken word. The experience level varied around the room but each member was ready to learn and improve on …
Our main highlight or even theme of the third workshop on Wednesday was ‘Mothers.’ In the circle, each of us shared her mother’s name and her other mother’s name (a woman we felt was like a mother to us.) Whitney had brought in a drawing of a heritage tree and cut-out leaves. All of us got …