Puberty, Sexuality, Sexual Orientation, and Gender Identity
Prevention of Hypersexualization and Media Awareness
Healthy and Egalitarian Relationships
Prevention of Street Gangs’ Recruitment of Girls for Sexual Exploitation
Healthy Lifestyle Choices
Entrepreneurship and Traditionally Male Jobs
Intimidation and Cyberintimidation
Puberty, Sexuality, Sexual Orientation, and Gender Identity
Puberty is a time when youth are undergoing major changes physically, psychologically, cognitively, socially, and relationally. Adolescence is a period of experimentation and learning about interpersonal relationships of all kinds. It’s also a time when young people are questioning themselves about sexual attraction, having their first sexual experiences, and dealing with sexually transmitted and blood-borne infection, birth control, and gender identity. There aren’t many places where youth can talk freely about these subjects and get non-judgmental answers to their questions.
To this end, Youth Services provides workshops in a safe setting where teen girls and boys can express themselves, learn, and reflect together on these subjects as they relate to their daily experience.
Prevention of Hypersexualization and Media Awareness
Advertising, popular music, and the fashion industry are an integral part of young people’s lives. Yet these media convey sexualized and sexist images and messages that can be violent in nature. Exposed to these discriminatory and reductionist images, it becomes hard for teens, who are seeking models with which they can identify, to maintain healthy relationships and develop self-esteem and a positive body image.
Youth Services has developed activities that use photos and videos to encourage girls and boys to think about their behaviour while developing their capacity for critical thinking about outside influences.
Healthy and Egalitarian Relationships
Many young people face violence in their friendships and love relationships. Under the influence of the dominant culture, young people may accept situations or relationships in which they are not respected and that can undermine their well-being. Youth Services proposes to inform and equip young people so they know what constitutes a healthy and egalitarian relationship and how to build and maintain a fulfilling relationship.
Prevention of Street Gangs’ Recruitment of Girls for Sexual Exploitation
The presence of teenage girls in gangs can often be explained by the very complex phenomena of sexual exploitation, prostitution, and runaway youth. Risk factors that can place a girl in a context conducive to violence, and, more specifically, in a situation of sexual exploitation, range from emotional dependency, sexualization, poor self-esteem and body image, the trivialization of sex, and lack of information about sex. Sexual exploitation can be prevented by, among other things, providing information to girls, and developing and reinforcing their potential with models that are diverse and reinforcing. To this end, Youth Services offers several tools and solid prevention-related expertise, including a training session, facilitation guides, a documentary, and prevention workshops. This approach fosters personal development, self-esteem, leadership, mutual aid, a sense of safety, and the development of critical thinking skills to help girls recognize interpersonal and systemic violence.
Healthy Lifestyle Choices
Making healthy lifestyle choices is a determining factor in young people’s health, well-being, and personal and social development. In response to the unattainable beauty ideals spread by the media, we must break down the stereotypes and provide youth with quality information about healthy lifestyle choices. Through creative workshops on cooking, nutrition, physical activity, and relaxation, Youth Services hopes to encourage teen girls and boys to make healthy choices when it comes to their bodies, food, and the environment. The workshops take a holistic health approach and encourage awareness about the links between physical and mental health, including the development of positive self-esteem and body image. Another goal is to develop critical thinking skills in teens as a way to help them make positive choices for their overall health.
Entrepreneurship and Traditionally Male Jobs
Women are the minority in the jobs of the future or “non-traditional” jobs where women represent less than 33% of the workforce (e.g., mechanic, engineer, etc.). These are the very job sectors that are now experiencing major labour shortages and are often better paid than traditionally female occupations. Similarly, few women are entrepreneurs, and even fewer are entrepreneurs in the non-traditional trades. In other words, women are economically disadvantaged in this area. In the context of a shortage of female entrepreneurs in the trades of the future, youth need a chance to learn about other career paths. Youth Services is therefore promoting the sectors of tomorrow in information workshops addressed to teen girls and boys.
Intimidation and Cyberintimidation
Intimidation is one of the most widespread forms of violence in the schools. In the era of information technology, it frequently takes the form of cyberintimidation, with negative impacts on youth, both socially and academically. Youth Services offers workshops to reduce the incidence of intimidation by helping youth develop their social skills and raising their awareness about its impacts.