Changing lives, one school at a time
Through the WE Schools program and its sponsor partners, students across the province and beyond are being empowered to become change-makers and compassionate leaders. a vow for Change Nineteen-year-old Indigenous rights activist Kiarra Leggo grew up with the idea that to help others was to help yourself. So, in 2016, she decided to take a vow of silence through the WE Are Silent campaign to raise awareness for Canada’s thousands of unsolved cases of Indigenous women who had gone missing or turned up dead.
She was joined by 15 other Indigenous youth from the Miywasin Friendship Centre, an Aboriginal services program in Medicine Hat, AB, where she’d volunteered since she was 10 years old. They agreed to hold it during the city’s Midnight Madness event, a holiday celebration in the first week of December when businesses stay open until midnight.
That evening, the centre set up a table to sell traditional foods and crafts. The group wrote signs, mounted news articles on a bulletin board and wore red buttons with the words “No more stolen sisters” written on them. Then, for the next four hours, their table sat silent in the middle of the city’s festivities. Only two members of the group remained speaking so they could explain the campaign to visitors.
The event was a success, and a year later Kiarra was asked to give a presentation on the subject at Medicine Hat College, where she is now enrolled in the Social Work program.
“The Vow of Silence brought us together,” says Carol Syrette, coordinator of the youth program at the Miywasin centre. “The event itself was fun and engaging and we just really enjoyed ourselves.”