Join us to celebrate the courage and contributions of our 2020 young changemakers.
The DAREarts Youth Leadership Awards celebrates the courage, commitment and contributions of young people who have created incredible positive change in their own lives and in their communities.
Each year, leaders from Canada’s foremost financial, insurance, automotive, legal and natural resource development sectors come together to show their commitment to underserved children and youth and honor our young changemakers.
This year’s Youth Leadership Awards is not only a celebration of the incredible accomplishments of our young changemakers but also a call to action for all of us to come together in support of children for whom social distancing efforts can quickly become complete isolation.
Social distancing is challenging for everyone but for the young people we serve, it can quickly lead to a mental health crisis. Imagine being 9 years old and living in a home struggling with poverty during this time or being 13 and living with the fear of heightened domestic violence and addictions in your home.
This is the situation of many DAREarts students and it’s our job to make sure that they’re not forgotten; to make sure that they know they matter, and that they have a safe space where they can feel lifted up by their DAREarts community.
That’s why for this year’s Youth Leadership Awards, we’re asking you to stand with us, even as we’re forced to stay apart. By giving today, you’ll directly support the emotional health and well-being of under-served young people struggling by providing them with DAREarts Kits – our online and remote programming solution to continue service during social distancing measures.
100% of your sponsorship will go to providing this vital lifeline to young people who need us most right now.
Now, more than ever, our students need to know we’re in their corner. And to do that, we need you to be in ours.
our 2020 Youth Leadership Award Winners
ABOUT DareArts Kits
DAREarts Kits are designed to support and nurture the emotional and social wellbeing of young people during this moment of upheaval. Our rational is simple – if we create spaces where our students can feel heard, connect with supportive adults and peers and have the opportunity to creatively express themselves, we can prevent them from needing to seek more intensive supports later on, or, if they are already at that crisis point, we can surface those needs and make sure they can get the help they need from mental health professionals.
We see this as a preventative approach to protecting the mental health of children and youth before they reach a crisis point.
WHAT’S INSIDE
Every DAREarts Kit contains:
- 10 weeks of carefully designed art-based activities and supplies to keep young people creating and connected
- an invitation to connect with each other and our supportive staff through our online classrooms and workshops (or, in cases where students do not have access to technology, supportive phone calls from our trained team).
These kits will be distributed to our students across Canada, and through partnerships with front-line support agencies including family shelters, food banks and other community organizations, with the goal of equipping 2,500 children in Ontario, British Columbia and Halifax with meaningful creative learning opportunities and the ability to connect with their peers and our supportive staff.
Each kit (including all supplies, activity guides and online/phone base support) costs us approximately $100 to prepare and distribute.
PRESENTED BY
Supporting Sponsor
with the generosity of
