Now What?

Maybe it’s just me, but it feels a little anti-climatic in class these days. We just wrapped up another event on Thursday night, and had a graduation ceremony on Friday night, but now we’re back hitting the books.

Our event: Speak Out! A Discussion on Violence Against Indigenous Women was a huge success. We had a really good turnout. Two TV stations covered it, we had a newspaper story, PSAs ran, and there were some officials in attendance. In the audience was a Mi’kmaq chief from Acadia First Nation, a Mi’kmaq elder, a women’s group, a city councillor, Amnesty International members and other interested parties, many of whom were women from the Míkmaq community. It was a fascinating discussion, as well as inspirational, and personally I was able to understand much more about the issue. Our panel shared very personal stories and offered a way forward. We listened to three very brave women, and I was proud to play a part in the night. We had excellent feedback and thanks from the Amnesty International client.

For the next few weeks I suspect we’ll catch up on lectures and work on several classes as usual. However, today we had a debriefing meeting with the co-chair for Kermesse, our client Sue Bain. Always appreciative, she again thanked us for our work. We went over what worked and what needed attention for next year’s fun fair. Many ideas were bandied around but the bottom line is that they need more volunteers to make the Kermesse bigger and better next year. Our class may provide a bit more guidance, but it will be next year’s class that will take on the 100th anniversary.

After a few days I’ll be back to taking notes and reading textbooks, but for a while there our class was more like a small PR firm. Small but mighty.

Janet Patten