02/09/2012

I.L.I.T.E

        The best way to describe I.L.I.T.E is it was amazing and educational at the same time, it was amazingly educational. My day at school started when we came to school and sat in the atrium.  After almost ten minutes we were loaded up on the school bus and then we headed down to Blessed Mother Theresa. After we got to the high school we sat down in the hallway square. About half an hour later we went and got our name tags and went to sit down in the cafeteria/stage area. That's where we started our day at I.L.I.I.T.E.

        I walked in to the dark room hearing blaring music from the large sound system. As everyone knows, Cardinal Leger is THE BEST! So obviously we got front row seats (okay not front row but close to it, you know what I mean). We sat there chatting, listening to the ear-corrupting loudness of the music. Then after sometime we were greeted by a guy (I don't know his name) and then we said a prayer to start our day as good Catholics. After we said the Hail Mary, we were greeted by another nice guy named Stu Saunders. He told us the story of how his parents divorced and then what gave him the drive to become a good leader. After this we got dispersed to our activities for the day. Mine in the morning was The Angel Foundation Group, and in the afternoon was Big up Your Voice.

        The Angel Foundation Group activity wasn't actually called that but that was what they told us about and I couldn't remember what it was actually called. When I got to the room, most eyes were on me because almost everybody else was there. I looked around for a seat then sat down in a seat closer to the back because that was one of the only ones available. We were told stories of single parents struggling to support their kids and how they feed lunch. The Angel Foundation would like to make everybody more equal in the world and not have people struggling in life while learning or getting an education. Then we had this activity. The activity was: if we had one penny and we could change something for the better with that penny, what would we do with it. I stated, I would send that penny to Africa and tell them to keep that penny circulating. It would give people some joy.

When this activity was over we headed down to the hall to get our lunch passes to get our yummy pizza man, um I mean pizza. Then we headed to the stage/cafeteria area where we sat down and ate our pizza. When we were done we went down to the stage area to watch some performances by a dance group, StarchildX (I got a pin!), a guy and his band (the guy's name was Diego and I was told he performed on The Next Star, or something). All the performances were spectacular! I got it all recorded on my phone.

When we were done here, we went back to the hallway where we would head down to our next workshop. My next workshop was Big up Your Voice. In this activity I walked in the room and sat down near my cool friend, Helena. Then later my other friend Christopher came in. We were talking to the people behind us. Their names were Samantha and Gabriella. Turns out I did make some friends! So when we were here we talked for almost half the time because the projector wasn't working. Then the boys helping our teacher brought in a 46-inch T.V. We started talking about Canada's history and the teacher asked everyone if we notice a gap in it. Everyone said no. Then he asked if we were all Canadian and everyone said yes except for one girl, she decided to be sarcastic and say NOOOOOOO. Then the teacher talked about when Canada was discovered. He said the people who discovered Canada told everyone back home of the "dark" people they found here. Then we looked back at the pictures. Not to be racist or anything, but the picture frames only held photographs of white people. We even watched a video on it. Turns out it was true. So we were told that we can make a difference and fill in disrespected people.

I.L.I.T.E was a great experience for me. If I had the choice I would go back again to do more activities. We were leaders and now improved leaders. I always like to build on my leadership skills so I could lead people by setting a good example. Anyone can be a leader if they tried. I was told at a workshop; we are leaders, so we should get up and make a difference now!

                                By Nick Y