Spot A Hero Launched!

It was a good gathering yesterday at Parliament Library between PATAC (Philippine Advocacy Through Arts & Culture) Migrante and GKYB.
It was inspiring to see how the Holy Spirit moves people to serve their fellowmen through their God-given gifts and passions.

We were made aware of social issues affecting the Filipino community through music. Likewise, we were able to share about GKYB and promote the Paraiso movie/Spot-a-hero to a new group of potential advocates. We missed Lori, Peachy and Junnie though...

I think there were some interesting connections made from yesterday's launch. Thanks to Maripi for arranging that opportunity.

Hope to see everyone in our upcoming GKYB activities this spring/summer:
-GK Booth @ Carrasauga Festival - May 23-25
-Paraiso movie showing @ Lourdes Church - June 27
-Community Service within Toronto - June or July?
-GK Walk - Sept 6

See you soon!

To view images from the event, click here

Follow Your Passion

For 2 separate occasions now, the first last April 28, 2008 at Jean Vanier in Scarborough and yesterday, May 9 at University of Toronto, GK Youth Build has been having small sessions with 12-20 secondary students to build on its promise to have more youth hear about an opportunity for them to become modern day leaders.

Yesterday's session was attended by 12 students from 6 various secondary schools as part of the Asian Heritage Month month-long activities. The discussion cum forum was moderated by GKYB Core founders Maripi Leynes and Junnie Arreza and was well received with active discussions and a lot of interesting points coming from the youth.

The results were very encouraging. One of the youth participants intimated we will be invited to their church to speak to their youth group. Another one came up to us and volunteered to have their groups of friends join in the next events that GK Youth Build will conduct.

Indeed, these are welcome and we are excited about the prospects.

If you have schools who want to hear the good news, as well as other stories about Therese's "Bags of Beads" campaign, etc. please email us at gkyouthbuild@gmail.com

Being Youth Again

What a wonderful feeling that is to be young again! Last April 25, Mike Almojuela and Junnie Arreza went with 14 youth dancers to have their taste of dancing in the streets of Toronto.

Well, initially planned to shoot at the Esplanade, it turned out that Ontario Place also had a better vantage point of the CN Tower, thus allowing the video's whole segment to be shot from its hilly entrance.

The youth ages 13 to 17 were so gracious enough to volunteer their time and talent to a worthy cause of being the video background for the upcoming GK Youth Build program called "Spot A Hero" contest. They traipsed, skipped, jumped, and somersaulted their way to what is now to be known in You Tube to be the Toronto-portion of "Spot A Hero" dance video.

Organized by Mica Cruz, a GK Youth Build volunteer, the team from IONA Secondary School was able to fully imbibe the theme of Global Youth Heroism through the dance self-choreographed by the team with Toby Mac's "One World" as background music.

"We plan to have the same video clips shot with various Canadian points of interest from Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa and Montreal and piece them together to come up with one Canadian video", Elvie Tan, mentioned in late 2007. The plan has now been approved and will launch this coming May 15, 2008.

The video on BETA, or on limited viewing was viewed by 150 in 5 days and was replaced by the current final version with 130 viewers in less than a week. "The beauty about having it in You Tube is that you can link and share with all your friends. This is the objective that we will ask all Canadian youth and volunteers to do when we fully launch this on the 15th of May.", said Junnie Arreza, who shot the video with the help of Mike on handheld camera.

For now, you can see the video by clicking play below.