Youth face many challenges through their crucial development years, as they build their sense of self, learn to deal with stress, and try to integrate into peer groups and society.
Low self-esteem and social isolation have been identified as key factors that influence the development and wellness of youth and are becoming more prevalent in today’s society. These factors along with poor interpersonal skills often act in vicious cycles to perpetuate and worsen issues.
Vicious Cycles: When youth have low self-esteem, they don’t have the confidence to interact with others, leading to social isolation. When they are socially isolated, it further wears down their self-esteem.
When youth don’t have relational and interpersonal skills, they don’t interact effectively with others in a way that builds positive social connections and bonds, and they end up being socially isolated. When they are socially isolated, they don’t have opportunity to develop or practice their relational skills. Without internal self-confidence and external social supports, youth do not have resilience to overcome life challenges and work towards accomplishing longer-term goals. Resilience has been shown to be one of the key factors that influence the success of children and youth in reaching their full potential.
Culture Shock Canada Charity’s primary initiative is our programming, which provides dynamic Hip Hop, dance-based education to communities more specifically children, youth and young adults.
Our Programs Team is on the move, travelling to schools, community centres and more to lead exciting and energizing dance-based sessions.
While all our programs build key movement vocabulary and create opportunities to choreograph and freestyle, multi-week sessions offer participants enriching self-esteem building activities, and education in relational, teamwork and leadership skills. In addition, our programs offer a platform for practising those skills, developing social bonds and successfully working towards a challenging long-term goal with peers. This contributes to greater resilience – helping participants to reach their full potential.
Overall, our programs are designed to encourage and empower communities of diverse backgrounds and abilities, and boost their confidence and skills for long-term success and resilience.
These programs range from single or short-term sessions that introduce movement based education and are great for all ages, to medium and long-term, multi-week sessions that build a deeper understanding of the histories and roots of Hip Hop dance, including genres such as funk, hip hop, house and more, while also learning movements from each art form.
Activities take place on location (usually our community partner), in a safe and positive environment. They are run by qualified instructors that have received dance teacher training through Culture Shock Canada, and have undergone police reference checks. A schedule of sessions is determined in advance in cooperation with our partners. Sessions can run from 1-2 hours, can be once or twice a week, and happen over a period of 3 or more months. There is always one main instructor and often, 1 or more assistant instructors are added depending on the size, age-range, and other characteristics of the group. Additional supervision is sometimes provided by our community partners as needed.
Specific activities within sessions that are run by Culture Shock Canada’s instructors include:
Culture Shock Canada Charity also organizes and operates an annual year-end showcase for all programs to participate in, which usually takes place in Ottawa. This provides an opportunity for participants to publicly perform, using the skills and tools developed throughout each program. The showcase is a reward for participants’ hard work and dedication in the program and helps to build self-esteem and confidence.
The year-end showcase is a hallmark of Culture Shock Canada Charity programming, and the our community partners are strongly encouraged to participate.
Culture Shock Canada Charity’s Medium term programs are set up in the same way as the long-term programs but run from 1-3 months. A condensed version of activities 1 through 8 as outlined in our Long Term Programs are run in the given time period.
Culture Shock Canada Charity also organizes and operates an annual year-end showcase for all programs to participate in, which usually takes place in Ottawa. This provides an opportunity for participants to publicly perform, using the skills and tools developed throughout each program. The showcase is a reward for participants’ hard work and dedication in the program and helps to build self-esteem and confidence.
The year-end showcase is a hallmark of Culture Shock Canada Charity programming, and the our community partners are strongly encouraged to participate.
Short term programs are set up in the same way as the Medium Term Programs, but only run for 1 single session to one month with a single group of participants. Only activities 1 through 4 as outlined in our Long Term Programs are run given the shorter timelines. There is a focus on the shorter educational, and self-confidence-based outcomes.
Classroom based environments and activities are generally not attractive to youth who already spend so much time in class at school. Urban dance is popular and relatable to youth. This gets them motivated and keeps them engaged with the programs and activities designed to work towards addressing self-esteem and social isolation issues.
Structured dance and artistic expression activities have shown to be effective at building self-esteem in youth. Especially as youth build their skills and share and bond with their peers. Experiential learning activities have been shown to be an essential way to build and practice relational, teamwork, and leadership skills.
Dance based activities also provide other relevant health and wellness benefits such as increased physical activity and fitness, a positive outlet for emotion and self-expression, and an alternative to negative influences and activities.
Culture Shock Canada Charity programs and activities leverage all of these factors and address the issues described in the Problem Statement/Rationale; breaking negative cycles by building self-esteem, reducing social isolation, and building interpersonal skills.
