Around Town: LEGO partners, Victim Circles of Support, Surrey Night Market

LEGO Mindstorms is providing a way for Youth Unlimited, HD Stafford Middle School and BCIT students to work together with pre-teens.

LEGO is the key to a creative partnership just under way between Youth Unlimited and HD Stafford Middle School in Langley. This report by Keela Keeping, director of marketing and communications for Youth Unlimited tells the story:

While it’s often teenagers who attract attention to their distraught outbursts, Youth Unlimited and HD Stafford Middle School have long known what studies show – it’s the pre-teen years where intervention is both possible and critical. That’s why they‘ve turned their attention to a surprising ally in helping those young people – LEGO. Puzzled? Think less interlocking plastic bricks, and more innovative robotics.

A 2011 United Way study showed that as disengaged kids aged nine to 12 moved from middle school to high school, they report a troubling decrease in self-confidence, self-worth, optimism, empathy and satisfaction with life. Left unchecked, this worsens as children move into adolescence.

“However,“ says Danny Ferguson, youth worker and director of Youth Unlimited in Langley, “the study also shows that children who engaged in after-school structured activities scored significantly higher across almost all dimensions of psychological and social well-being than their non-involved counter-parts.“

It was this understanding that prompted Stafford officials to push for additional school activities for students to fill the gap between the end of the school day and when they go home. Input from BCIT practicum students suggested the launch of an after-school LEGO club, but the resources and manpower to launch it seemed unattainable.

The Stafford vice principal reached out to Youth Unlimited outreach workers.

“We saw this project as a really smart investment in our kids,” says Ferguson. “LEGO has a way of igniting imagination and developing community – two ingredients we definitely want to see more of in local youth. LEGO Mindstorms takes it to a whole new level.”

The project is based on the First LEGO League curriculum, which uses LEGO Mindstorms, a series of kits with software and hardware to create customizable and programmable robots. Projects like this enable youth to research engineering projects, such as environmental sustainability, then build working systems to address these issues.

Through the power of social media, Youth Unlimited jumped the initial funding hurdle; after six hours of broadcast, Kitchening and Co. stepped up as a program sponsor and the program was a “go.”

“It’s the definition of community partnership,” says Ferguson. “Stafford provides the space, BCIT students teach robotics, the shop teacher volunteers his time and a local business provides the start-up funds. We couldn’t be more thrilled to coordinate and provide the youth workers.”

While research affirmed that project relevance was high, expectations for student turn-out was temperate.

“We were expecting 10 – 20 students to be interested,” says Ferguson, “But as it turns out we have our 12 kids, and there are over 100 on the waitlist.”

The initiative launched May 31 and will continue through the end of the school year. The hope of Youth Unlimited, HD Stafford and the community partners is to relaunch the full-fledged project in September to meet the demand. Ferguson says an additional $1,000 would create space for 30 – 40 more youth. He dreams of sending kids to provincial LEGO competitions and LEGOLAND in California.

“I would love to find the funds to send Langley youth to next year’s competition,” he says. “This project really feels like just a beginning of what’s possible.”

Victim Circles of Support

This initiative seems like a great idea. Catholic Charities Justice Services (CCJS) is launching a new program: Victim Circles of Support (V-CoS). Participants in a day-long gathering this weekend will hear speakers, including Bishop David Monroe of Kamloops, and take part of the discussions about how to reach out to victims of crime.

The event, which takes place during Victims and Survivors of Crime Week 2016, will be held on Saturday (June 4) in Langley. It is funded through the Department of Justice Victims Fund.

Organizers Germaine Solaiman and Maureen Donegan are also both involved with CoSA (Circles of Support and Accountability), which offers support for high risk sex offenders who have served time in prison.