Some Grade 12 students at W. J. Mouat Secondary have drawn awareness to social injustice issues through projects they recently put into action.
The students were assigned, as part of their social justice class, to select a current issue and develop a solution and action plan for it.
The projects were then presented to the class and a few were selected to develop.
One student, Hemaya Bassi (in photo at left), did her project on the number of indigenous women who have gone missing or been murdered in Canada.
Her action plan consisted of planting on school property a mountain ash tree, a symbol of protection that will also serve as a memorial to the missing and murdered women.
The tree planting took place Dec. 6 – the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.
Another student, Eva Barker, came up with Blue Bracelet Day to raise awareness and money for children who are born into the sex trade and at brothels. In India, for example, there are more than 500,000 sex workers, and one-third of those are under the age of 18.
On Dec. 7, blue bracelets were handed out to students and teachers, and any donations received will now be turned over to the Blue Heart Foundation, which supplies the brothels with condoms and birth control, and provides education for the children affected.
Student Levi Jones focused his project on the issue of aboriginal groups in Canada who do not have clean water to drink, mainly due to government under-funding of water filtration systems.
Jones and a group of classmates went from class to class with school iPads and asked students to sign a petition on amnesty.com for clean water for aboriginal communities. They collected about 300 signatures for the petition, which now has been signed by almost 2,800 people in total.
Another student, Leiandra Desch, held Superhero Day to raise funds for packages for UNICEF that include 100 vaccines for polio, tetanus and measles; 10 mosquito nets; and one vaccine pack.
Her goal was to save 800 children from deadly preventable diseases by providing them with vaccines.
The project involved holding a showing of the movie The Amazing Spider-Man for $2 admission and selling tickets for a “balloon pop” to win gift baskets.