On May 21, 2012, a group of Canadians fasted for 24 hours to protest the cutting of Katimavik, a national youth volunteer program.

The program was cut in the last federal budget, citing costliness. The program costs no more than sending a student to high school, while generating full-time volunteer work in communities. Eighty-five percent of the Katimavik budget is directly invested in communities. The cut was a bad decision.

One hundred and nineteen Canadians participated in the fast. The event was covered by eight media interviews across the country. More action is coming.

Show your support for Katimavik. Consider joining the next event, the Katimavik Day of Action, a protest through volunteer work on June 23. Many Katimavik alumni are lifelong volunteers in their communities. This payoff is never measured in government calculations. Raise awareness by signing on.

Write your Member of Parliament, urging a reversal to the cut. These letters make a real difference.

The first idea was to gather 21 Canadians for the one day fast, a tribute to the 21-day hunger strike of Senator Jacques Hébert in 1986. The program was cut at that time, but Hébert’s passion and the determination of like-minded Canadians led to a new Katimavik that has been serving communities since 1994. The idea of the fast caught on quickly and our numbers are growing well past the original 21. We are represented by Canadians from across the country, by participants across generations and their supporters.

We hope this peaceful protest will prompt the government to reflect on the program’s great value to Canadian youth and communities, and cancel the proposed cut.

You can now access the Facebook page without a Facebook account. Link.

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I will be going to a ”Save Katimavik” protest on Parliament Hill, Monday at 12 noon. For those not able to attend, there will be live broadcasting online at CUTV Montreal. You can learn more on Facebook and Twitter.

(painting and photo by Shannon Leigh Goodhead)

]]> http://blog.johnmiedema.ca/2012/04/21/save-katimavik-protest-on-parliament-hill-monday-at-12-noon/feed/ 0 http://blog.johnmiedema.ca/2012/04/21/save-katimavik-protest-on-parliament-hill-monday-at-12-noon/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/johnmiedema/blog/~3/D0ZAMy85tys/ http://blog.johnmiedema.ca/2012/04/20/why-katimavik-should-be-saved/#comments Fri, 20 Apr 2012 14:33:54 +0000 johnmiedema http://blog.johnmiedema.ca/?p=415 Katimavik is a Canadian program in which young people travel to different Canadian communities and do volunteer work. In the last federal budget, the government cancelled funding for the program. This was a bad decision that should be changed.

In 1984, I lived in a small auto town in Southwestern Ontario. I had not traveled out of Ontario, and assumed the rest of Canada was much the same. I was just finishing grade 12. A friend of mine said he was thinking about signing up for Katimavik. “Katima-what?” I asked. Looking at his brochure I saw a rugged lifestyle in return for a dollar-a-day spending money. “Are you crazy?!” I asked. Not quite sure of what to do next myself, a week later I signed up. Over nine months I volunteered in three communities, English and French, with a group of other young Canadians. We raised the original foundations of Fort Frontenac in Kingston Ontario. We helped build the historic cable car park in North West River Labrador. We volunteered in the school library of St. Brieux Saskatchewan. The program expanded my sense of self and my identity as a multicultural Canadian. I learned self-sufficiency and job skills. I returned to my hometown a changed person. I know for certain that I changed direction at this point, thinking more broadly, going back to school, taking on challenges that have kept me an employed and engaged Canadian citizen. It became the foundation of my lifelong participation in Canadian political and cultural life.

Let’s face it, the funding of Katimavik has become a partisan issue. It was founded in the 1970′s by Trudeau’s Liberal government and later cut by Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives. It was re-instated after a massive protest by Canadians and the hunger strike of Senator Jacques Hebert. The program has been cut again by Harper’s Conservatives. We know that Stephen Harper and the Conservatives care about investing in youth too. Let’s take a moment to consider why that investment should continue in Katimavik. Nearly three generations since its inception, Katimavik is established in Canadian culture, an option seriously considered by many young people. Say “Katimavik” today and young people know what you mean. It is a program storied by past generations. It is wrong to cut it. On economic terms alone, the program has clear return-on-investment. The annual budget for 2010-2011 was 15.9 million. The volunteer work is valued at 10.7 million and the direct investments in communities at 13.9 million (Katimavik, 2012, PDF). Don’t let party politics wreck this.

You can help save Katimavik. Write to your MP,  the Prime Minister, and Minister James Moore. Join the campaigns. Tell your Katimavik stories. Thank you.

To borrow a cadence from Michael Pollan: Read books. As often as you can. Mostly classics.

Aim for 30 minutes a day. You can squeeze in that half hour pretty easily if only, during your free moments—whenever you find yourself automatically switching on that boob tube, or firing up your laptop to check your favorite site, or scanning Twitter for something to pass the time—you pick up a meaningful work of literature. Reach for your e-reader, if you like. The Slow Books movement won’t stand opposed to technology on purely nostalgic or aesthetic grounds. (Kindles et al make books like War and Peace less heavy, not less substantive, and also ensure you’ll never lose your place.)

But Slow Books will have standards about what kinds of reading materials count towards your daily quota. Blog posts won’t, of course, but neither will newspaper pieces or even magazine articles.

Also excluded: non-literary books.

…

Read the article. (Thanks Dave)

Not to be fussy, but is it slow books or slow reading? I know they say slow food not slow eating, but that’s because the growing and preparation of the food is the main focus. To me, slow books would be about handcrafting beautiful books. Not a big deal. I enjoyed the article. I left this question as a comment on the article.