Photo Documentary

In class we got the opportunity to do a photo documentary on a topic of our choice that relates to migration or culture. I used this as a chance to share with the class a special dance group I was apart of back in high school. The name of the group is S.T.O.P.P. (Student's Triumph Over Peer Pressure) and what we do as a group is cultural dances that deliver a message. This group was started a little over a decade ago after one of our first members lost a brother due to gun violence. S.T.O.P.P. does cultural dances including African, South Asain, Carribean as well has step dancing, hip hop, modern and contemporary dances to deliver the message to young people. This message is to stop the violence, the racism and the hatred towards one another. In today's society, we are losing many of our young people to gang violence and everyone young and old is affected by it. As a group S.T.O.P.P. would go from school to school all across Ontario and other provinces including Nova Scotia, British Columbia, Quebec, etc. to perform these dances. In additon to these dances, we would sing and act as well. This class basically brought together a bunch of kids with different cultural backgrounds to use these cultutal differences to deliver the same message. The way I felt about this class was, if we can put aside our differences to do something positve then why can't everyone else? This class opened my eyes to a major issue that we still face many years after I've been in the class and I feel that it is about time people focus on what's important in life rather than focusing on the negative. No one should have to die from violence, racism or hatred and if people were more open minded to sloving problems in a more positve way, we wouldn't have to worry feeling safe in our own surroundings.