Many of us from the YouthAreAwesome crew is involved in fundraising in our community.  The best ideas are the simple ones and this next idea is amazing.  Servants Anonymous has started a project called Socks for Shelter.  They are selling socks and the proceeds from the Socks for Shelter program will provide safe shelter, affordable housing, recovery, counselling, education, job training for women and their children provided by YWCA and SAS.  What a great idea!

The socks are being sold for $1.  $1 can go a long way in helping out others.  Most of us carry at least a $1 worth of change in our pockets and this is an amazing yet simple way of giving back.  One great idea was is to get a whole bunch of friends together and sell the socks as team.  Set a goal for your group and sell them at your school or out in the community.

To get involved visit http://www.servantsanon.com/.

‘Cause I can’t hear you over our RECORD BREAKING GOLD MEDAL COUNT!

Well, the 21st Winter Olympics has officially closed. The flame is extinguished and the monumental task of putting on the 22nd Olympics has been officially passed to Russia’s Sochi City in an absolutely breathtaking – and hilarious!- closing ceremonies. Now, for those of you who missed yesterday night’s closing ceremony’s, I remind you that you can re-watch much of the Olympic moments at CTV.ca. Also, for Shaw customers, the Olympics are free on demand! They certainly were worth watching.

The ceremonies themselves started off with a brilliantly executed sketch regarding the 4th Arm that did not raise on the night of the Opening Ceremonies. Personally, I thought the fact that the VanOc committee had the courage to put themselves out there and say: YES, we made a mistake and, guess what, the games were still amazing! And when the final torchbearer, Catriona LeMay Doan, who was unable to light her arm 17 days ago had her Olympic moment… I immediately knew my homework was not getting done that night.From there, the celebration just got better. The way the athletes were brought in, you could almost feel the air of friendship and international cooperation. And, I mean, gigantic mounties, beavers and flying moose? Mounties dancing to Michael Buble? Lumberjacks and Canoes? Beautiful-ladies in Maple-Leaf costumes? The “last number” before the flame was extinguished was addressed to all Canadian stereotypes and… man was it a wonderful way to express the Canadian sense of humour!

The Russians also gave us a little taste of what to expect in 2014 – complete with a satellite orchestral rendition, dancers from the Russian ballet, performers from the Russian circus prancing around in LED-filled hamster balls and an opera singer in a 10ft extended costume… I know I’m stoked to see what Sochi offers in four years.

Regardless of the hitches and tragedy, successes and gold medals, the Vancouver 2010 games will never be forgotten by Canadians – technology has transformed the Olympics forever. Never before has one been able to flip open their phone and check out the medal count, or rewatch clips on-demand on the internet. Never before have fans been able to follow athletes on twitter. What do you think about the games of the Technology age?

Also, don’t forgot the Paralympic Games begin March 12th – so don’t lose your Olympic Spirit because CANADA IS NOT DONE YET! Check here for the Paralympic Schedule.

Youth that Are Awesome Funfact: For those who watched the ceremonies: you know all those white-clad people dancing around and pumping up the crowd? Those are over 500 Grade 9-11 athletes and volunteers from all across BC. Pretty cool, eh?

To understand this novel the reader must have some basic knowledge about the cold war. The reader must also understand some misconceptions people once had about nuclear war. For example, some scientists once believed that only Labrador and New Zealand would be able to survive the radiation caused by a nuclear war.

The story takes place centuries after a massive nuclear war has destroyed civilization. The surviving bit of mankind in Labrador has begun to rebuild. A strict, Christian society is set up. This society attempts to eliminate all forms of mutations so that mankind remains untainted and may one day become as powerful as the “Old People” (us).

The protagonists has no visible deviations but discovers that him, along with a few others have abilities that the regular person doesn’t. Therefore they must keep there abilities a secret. But anyone can guess that the secret won’t stay hidden for long.

This story gets quite exiting around 2/3 of the way in. but it is extremely slow paced and quite boring at first. There were a lot of unnecessary parts in this novel. There were multiple time where I would ask myself the question “who cares”.

The point of a novel is to entertain its audience; the reader should not have to read 2/3 of the book before anything entertaining happens. But for reason I do not understand, many people love this book, perhaps they are more patient than I am. Anyways, I do not recommend this novel,  and I think I’ll give it a 2.5/5

We’ve already told you about the cool festivals and events in March…but have you heard about the Calgary Kiwanis Music Festival?

Yes, as you may have guessed, the Calgary Kiwanis Music Festival is one of North America’s largest amateur competitive classical music festivals.  To put that into normal English?  The Kiwanis festival is a celebration of music and speech arts!

Close to 10,000 amateur musicians and speech arts performers have the opportunity to perform, compete for scholarships, listen to others, and be adjudicated by national and international adjudicators during this festival. The performers featured range from being 5 to 25 years old, and they will be

Have you ever wondered about how systematic news reports have always been?  You maybe bored out of your mind watching news reports on TV, or you may find it interesting — if so, I applaud you.  The one thing we can be certain of is that news reports are important and sort of part of our everyday lives.  It is one of the means, if not the only means, that connects our little world to the big world out there — knowing the world without being there.  Surely, you see news reports on everyday issues, but have you ever seen a news report on the news itself?  Confused yet?  Just watch the video to find out:

Now, you just watched the video of the day.  The next time you watch news report, you’ll know exactly what the news person is doing.  And, you might be surprised how much the news reports we seen every resemble what is described in the video.

The “Where It’s Art” series, until now, have focused mainly on visual art. Today, I’m branching out into another area of fine arts – music.  I’d like to introduce you to some artists that I feel have an extremely high talent:exposure ratio. Perhaps we can decrease it a little bit.

I’d like to start by focusing on 18 year-old Rachel Ferguson,  a young artist from Aylmer, Quebec,  a “small town across the river from Ottawa,” as she puts it.  Rachel has been singing since she was 10, and also plays the guitar. Voted CHUM Emerging Artist in June ’08, Rachel, interestingly enough, writes her songs with her music producer Chris Landon over the Internet.  She writes the lyrics, he sends her the instrumental track via email, and she records the song at home before sending it back to him.  Quite the process!

About Her: Rachel is an Indie-Rock fan, but isn’t averse to catchy pop tunes.  She never leaves home without her iPod, which is full of playlists that include the likes of Blondie, The Killers, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Regina Spektor, Feist, Metric, and Juliette and the Licks. She also likes to mix in a little Avril Lavigne, Justin Timberlake, and Rihanna.

About Her Music: Rachel’s influences include Avril Lavigne, Simple Plan and All American Rejects. Her style is pop/rock/powerpop. She has seven songs available to listen to on her MySpace page and they’ve been played over 3 MILLION times!  From rawer pieces like “Stronger Than You Think I Am,” and “Throw It Away,” to the simple, reassuring “Joshua,” Ferguson’s songs are full of emotion.  If you enjoy her songs, you can support her music by purchasing songs on rachelfergusonmusic.com.

My Opinion: The first song of Rachel’s that I listened to was “Never Good Enough”, which was on my top ten list for quite a while. Wanting more, I listened to her other available music. While all keeping the same depth and focus, her songs are varied and genuine. I love the beat of her songs and admire the amount of emotion that she manages to inject into them.

We all have at some point in our lives experienced or been in a situation that is uncomfortable and downright awkward; some more than others, unfortunately.  Ever wonder to yourself why these kinds of embarrassing moments seem to only happen to you? Don’t worry.

It’s not ‘just you.’

You may have seen the hand gesture or heard the expression ‘awkward turtle’ used to describe an awkward moment. The people at Awkwardturtle feel the same way.  The concept of the website is similar to other well known websites such FMyLife, where people can post and share their stories. The readers can comment and vote: ‘Awkward turtle, or ‘It happens’ for each story. There is also a photo gallery where you can catch a glimpse of an ‘awkward turtle’ moment.

Why is it a turtle instead of a monkey, hippo, giraffe..etc? I don’t know.  Maybe it is because turtles are cute and sometimes wobbly on their legs when they walk making them prone to get in embarrassing situations. Or it’s simply just fun to put your hands on top of the other with your thumbs sticking outward and rotating forward.

(Quick Tip: Sometimes in a situation saying ‘awkward turtle!’ may in fact make things less awkward!  Best thing to do is laugh it off and don’t stress about it, after all this happens to everyone.)

Cheers! =D

Every now and then we receive some cool research opportunities from the University of Calgary.  We try to help out and promote what they’re doing as they’re work is often connected to youth issues. This one passed by our email and relates to how youth connect with counsellor’s.  Have a read:

Adolescents between the ages of 14 and 16 are needed to participate in a study exploring the relationship between counsellors and adolescent clients. Most of the information on the counselling relationship is from the adult counsellor’s perspective and it is very important that we understand this relationship from the adolescent’s point of view. Therefore, this study requires the following of its participants:

1. To attend a free, 30 minute, one-on-one counselling session with a PhD counselling student (supervised by a registered psychologist) on the topic of career paths, study skills, and/or exam preparation. This session will be videotaped and used in the next part to the study.

2. Participants will review the video tape with the researcher and use it as a talking point to discuss their engagement in counselling and the working relationship with their counsellor. This should take approximately one hour.

3. Once the researcher has reviewed and analyzed the information across the individual sessions and conversations, the researcher will email each participant the themes found in relation to adolescent engagement in counselling. Participants are asked to respond to the email within 2 weeks and comment on how that information fits with their experience.

Participants can express interest or withdraw from the study at any time without consequence. For more information or to sign up as a participant, please contact Chantelle Quesnelle, at the University of Calgary: c/o 403-606-5206, or clquesne@ucalgary.ca