HELPING MINORITIES
Arjei Franklin gives back
Organizers of an upcoming youth summit aimed at visible minorities want to hear about the obstacles and challenges they face every day and then brainstorm for solutions.
The Amherstburg Freedom Summit set for Oct. 27-28 at the town’s Freedom Museum is open to students in grades 11 and 12 as well as first-year university or college students and educators.
A series of workshops will examine the barriers young people of colour face today, what freedom means to the youths in the 21st century and how to promote economic freedom as well as empathy and solidarity.
“There are still certain freedoms that don’t exist,” said Lorene Bridgen, the assistant curator of the Amherstburg Freedom Museum. “We want to look for solutions that can be positively implemented into the community. How can we make a difference?”
She hopes the summit attracts an ethnically diverse mix of participants.
In addition to the four workshops, the summit will include keynote addresses from former Canadian Football League player Arjei Franklin and Canadian playwright Trey Anthony.
“They are two really important contributors to the community because of their successes,” Bridgen said.
Anthony is the first black Canadian female to write and produce a show for prime time television based on her award-winning play, Da Kink in My Hair. The comedy series revolved around a Caribbean-Canadian hair salon and appeared for two seasons on Vision TV.
After graduating from the University
of Windsor, Franklin played seven seasons in the CFL, retiring from the Calgary Stampeders in 2013.
For the past five years, he has taught at Windsor Adventist Elementary School in Windsor.
Franklin will be involved in the workshop on making sound financial decisions and in his keynote speech he will focus on “what it means to stand out, what it takes to stand out.”
Franklin had great family support growing up in the Toronto area and jokingly says his two university degrees still make him “the least educated in my family.”
He has three older sisters, one being a professor with a PhD, another with a master’s in education and a third who works as a physical therapist.
His parents came to Canada in the 1970s from the tiny Caribbean island of Anguilla and while they faced racial discrimination in their new homeland, they never used it as a crutch.
As a young black kid who was a good athlete, Franklin’s parents didn’t allow him to settle for academic mediocrity as part of a racist stereotype.
“Some people thought I was good at sports and that’s all,” he said.
What he learned was “ultimately you can’t control what other people think about you. I can control my effort and my willingness to keep going. My message will be control the things you can.”
He knows visible minorities still face racism in schools today.
“The only way we make a change is to acknowledge when there is problems,” he said.
“Then we can look at how to solve these problems. The solutions have to come from what we can control.”
Bridgen thinks the timing is right.
“With all the negative relationships between groups these days, I think it’s relevant to bring young people together,” she said.
The town of Amherstburg was the site where thousands of slaves first tasted freedom after crossing the Detroit River from the United States with the help of the Underground Railroad.
The summit will introduce the museum to a younger generation, Bridgen said.
“The times are changing and young people are the next generation. We need to keep them engaged and coming to the museum,” Bridgen said.
The summit is free and transportation will be provided for student volunteers and participants as well as meals, thanks to local fundraising efforts, the Ontario 150 Community Celebration program and a sponsorship from TD Canada Trust.
The deadline for registering as a participant is Friday. Those students interested in participating or volunteering should call the museum at 519-736-5433.
Volunteers are needed not only during the summit but on setup day, Oct. 26. Bridgen said the museum plans to host a summit every two years.