This week, 5 students from the Ecole St. Luc set up shop in their school cafeteria to spread the word about Head & Hands and raise funds to support our programs and services.

In case you may have forgotten, the secondary school cafeteria is not a quiet space. During the lunch hour, the cafeteria was loud and bursting with energy in every direction. The students rose to the challenge, managing a line-up at their bake sale table while distributing pamphlets and starting conversations with fellow students about the support available to them at Head & Hands. According to the students, their biggest challenge was attracting youth to the table, because many of the youth in their school didn’t know about Head & Hands yet.

Their creative pitch: $1 for a brownie, and to help us make sure you have support in your adolescent lives!

This week’s fundraiser was part of a year-long project that the students are working on, with support from Madame Blondin. According to the students, they wanted to get involved with Head & Hands because we’re in their neighborhood, and we help people who are their age.

Earlier in the school year, they came to Head & Hands for a tour of our programs and services. They met the team, and talked about what it means to work in solidarity with an organization. They learned about our holistic and harm-reductive approach, and why it is so important to have youth services that meet youth where they’re at, so that they could become advocates for Head & Hands in their school and community. They have outreach and fundraising activities planned throughout the year, including a car wash coming up in the spring!

We truly love when youth get involved in supporting other youth in our community. No effort is too small, and everyone has something to contribute. We’re thrilled that these Ecole St. Luc students are learning fundraising skills, and becoming advocates for youth health in Montreal!

If you would like more information about how to become involved with our Solidarity through Action campaign, here are guides for students and the general public. 

For the past 8 YEARS, Faggity Ass Fridays (FAF) has brought party people onto the dance floor and straight into our hearts at Head & Hands. As Montreal’s longest-running queer dance party, FAF is forever young and forever grateful for all of the folks who come out every month to dance for social change.

2015 marks a new chapter for FAF: we’re moving venues, back to The Playhouse! The Playhouse saw our favorite little dance party grow into its fabulous self, and now we’re back, stronger than ever and ready to party.

On January 31st, come celebrate a new year and a new venue with us as Faggity Goes Homo, exceptionally on a Saturday this month.

As always, all donations collected at the door go directly to the Sense Project, Head & Hands’ holistic, sex-positive, and queer-friendly sex education program. We’ll  be on the dance floor, sweating and grooving to make sure Montreal youth get the sex education they deserve.

Unfortunately, The Playhouse is not wheelchair accessible. There is one flight of stairs into the venue. If you’re interested in specific measurements or more information about accessibility, please contact the host of the party at faggity@headandhands.ca

DJs:

JNNBNNRCK

J’VLYN D’ARK

Hostess: 

J’VLYN D’ARK

Saturday January 31^st, 10pm-3am

18+

The Playhouse (5656 avenue du Parc) 

$10 suggested donation, PWYC, no one turned away

“We thought carefully about things we wished we had access to when we were struggling with our identities, or when we were struggling with the erasure, normativity, and violence in our everyday world…It is our hope that this deck finds its way to the hands of young queer and trans folks who might not otherwise have access to supportive communities.”

– “The Affirmations Deck” intro

If you’ve been in the reception area at Head & Hands lately, you may have noticed a few new posters up on our wall. We recently came across the Affirmations Deck and loved them so much we had to put them up!

The Affirmations Deck was created by a group of queer and trans* youth involved with Planned Parenthood Toronto’s Filling in the Blanks: Queering SexEd project, coordinated by former Head & Hands boardie, and monthly donor, Carly Boyce!  Each card features a statement to help youth feel seen, valued, and supported. The cards touch on A BUNCH of topics, including bodies, consent, gender, identity, healing/recovery, self-love, relationships, and more.

You can scroll through a few examples below, or check out the entire deck & learn more about Queering SexEd online here (you can even print your own copy and add your own affirmations!). You can also flip through the deck at our main office– we’ve got them all printed out in our reception area.

Winter is here! As usual, all Head & Hands locations and services are shutting down for the next two weeks (December 22, 2014 – January 4, 2015) so that we can rest up and prepare for the year ahead.

All our services will re-open and run on their regular schedules as of January 5, 2015.

Thank you to our volunteers, interns, board of directors, donors, supporters, friends, allies, and staff, as well as to NDG youth and the community for an amazing year!

We wish you all a very happy new year. See you in 2015!

On October 5^th, Rhonda, our Social Counselor, attended the 2^nd annual Students in Mind conference at McGill University. The conference aimed to create a space for the McGill community to come together to change the mental health climate on campus and to reflect on the role mental health plays in everyday life.

Rhonda was excited to attend the conference to bring mental health to the forefront of conversations— to make it a topic that can be talked about, rather than hidden. “Unless people have been depressed themselves, it is very difficult to imagine what it is like,” Rhonda explains. “When students feel they’re depressed or anxious, they need to be able to talk about it.”

Around 150 students came to campus on a Sunday for the conference, which included workshops on self-care and peer support, speeches, and panels on topics such as cross-cultural portrayals of mental health, social media and mood, and student strategies for mental health.

Rhonda spoke on a Mental Health/Illness & Criminality panel, which discussed the over-representation of people with various forms of mental illness in the criminal justice system, and ways to address the marginalization and isolation of people in need of mental health support.

Mental health support is notoriously difficult to access in Montreal; many youth are unable to access appropriate, affordable support and can fall through the cracks of the existing social safety net, which can lead to marginalization and criminalization. Existing support systems, like schools, social workers, and psychologists, are often overwhelmed with cases and are not always able to provide appropriate, ongoing support to youth.

Rhonda is able to support youth facing mild to moderate depression or personal crises, and works in collaboration with Dr. Tellier to support youth who want a mental health evaluation from a doctor.  Dr. Tellier is able to provide evaluations at our medical clinic and referrals to psychiatrists. As always at Head & Hands, our mental health support services are holistic, non-judgmental, and focused on giving youth the support they need to make informed choices about their mental and physical well-being.

Last Wednesday, the Young Parents Program (YPP) had lots of fun in the spirit of Halloween! 45 people, including YPP parents, children, staff, and volunteers, gathered together to turn YPP into a Halloween wonderland, complete with:

• a fabulous haunted house for the children, created and animated by 5 parents who may have enjoyed it even more than their young ones;
• a joint parent-child pumpkin decorating activity;
• decorating paper bags for candy and trick-or-treating around the YPP building;
• a costume contest for the parents, with prizes for the best, cutest, and scariest costumes;
• a potluck meal, with an amazing spread from squash and pasta to homemade bread;
• a dance party, of course!

No surprise, this YPP party was a grand success!