| ESSAY CONTEST |
LIVED WRITES: YOUTH RIGHTS ACTIVISM ESSAY CONTEST 2006
ESSAY WINNERS ANNOUNCED
Congratulations to all participants in the Lived Writes Essay Contest!
We received many inspiring essays from across the country. Our grand prize winners will be coming to Ottawa to participate in the Forum on Women's Activism in Constitutional and Democratic Reform, a 2-day conference hosted on Parliament Hill.
Click here to visit the Lived Writes blog where the essay contest winners will be posting stories and photos from their trip.
We would like to recognize our grand prize winners, as well as some of our other outstanding participants:
Grand Prize Winners
Emily Bunnett-Jones
Anita Gyemi
Kalindi Patel
Semi-Finalists
Leah Blekkenhorst
Alexandra Cool-Fergus
Krupa Kotecha
Derek Hambly
Miranda Thorne
Leah Waldes
Robyn Zajac
Honourable Mentions
Bakhtawar Awan
Megan Benjamin
Olivia Best
Shruti Chakravarthy
Brianna DaSilva
Kimberly Dowell
Pauline Saunders
Fletch Shaw
Michelle Tedesco
Attention youth in grades 7-12:
Participate in the Lived Writes essay contest for a chance to win one of 3 grand prize all-expense paid trips to Ottawa to participate in the Youth Program on February 14/15, 2006.
Winners will have the opportunity to attend the conference and will meet and engage with seasoned political activists. Youth winners will also participate in an inter-generational oral history project and will have the opportunity to refine and publish their essays in a book commemorating this historic event.
Sign up for our e-mail list and receive updates on the essay competition and news related to the conference! Just send an e-mail to essaycontest-subscribe@adhoc25.org to subscribe.
Let's get the word out! Print off this poster and help us promote the Lived Writes essay contest: DOWNLOAD POSTER (PDF, 1.28 MB)
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Background
The Ad Hoc Conference of 1981 - An Example of Successful Women's Activism:
On February 14, 1981, an historic meeting took place on Parliament Hill. Thirteen hundred women gathered in West Block's Room 200, to review Pierre Trudeau's proposed Charter of Rights and Freedoms to ensure that it protected women's rights.
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is entrenched in our Constitution, which is the highest law in Canada. Laws passed by governments must be consistent with the Charter. Canadian women learned the hard way in the 1970s that the Canadian Bill of Rights would not secure their rights - every case brought by women was lost. So by the time the entrenched Charter was proposed, women knew how crucial it was to ensure substantive equality. That is, wording in the 1980 draft of the Charter had to be amended to ensure women's rights were not just words on paper but that they would become "lived rights." For this to happen, governments would be required to make laws and policies that delivered equality of result - to "male and female persons." Key to women receiving equal benefit of the law meant that women's lived realities be taken into account by governments and courts in deciding if women's equality rights were infringed, in effect.
These women who attended this historic conference were not supposed to be there. The government agency that planned the conference, had cancelled it. But volunteers - known as the Ad Hoc Committee of Canadian Women - stepped forward and organized the conference anyway. They drew four times as many participants as the government had expected in just a few weeks of planning.
As a result of citizen input, including the Ad Hoc Conference and the lobbying that followed it, the Liberal government of the day strengthened the s.15 equality clause and added a new equality guarantee clause, s. 28, to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms:
Section 28: Notwithstanding anything in this Charter, the rights and freedoms referred to in it are guaranteed equally to male and female persons.
It was a stunning political victory and is an inspiring reminder of what ordinary citizens can do to change policies, laws, and institutions, to advance equality.
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2006 Essay Question
Devise an Action Plan:
Identify something you see as an important barrier to women's equality at the local, national, or international level. For example, you may choose to focus on difficulties women living in rural Afghanistan face in attempting to gain access to education. Or, you may focus on the disproportionately low number of female politicians in Parliament. You may even focus on something you have observed personally, such as the way you perceive women to be represented in the media. Explain why you think this is an important equality rights issue.
Next, either:
- Devise an action plan on how you would go about trying to address this issue. Whom would you engage? Government? Local politicians? Activists? Businesses? How would you go about organizing and implementing your plan? Why do you think this will be a successful strategy?; or,
- Identify an organization that is currently trying to address this issue and discuss how successful you think this organization's strategy is or will be and why. For example, Equal Voice (http://www.equalvoice.ca) was created to raise publicly the issue of under-representation of our women in our national Parliament and the legislatures. The Native Women's Association of Canada (http://www.nwac-hq.org) was created to lobby for improvements to the social, cultural, and political well-being of Aboriginal women in Canada. What could be done to improve the effectiveness of this organization's efforts to increase equality?
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Eligibility, Rules & Regulations
The competition is open to all Canadian students, both male and female, in grades 7-12.
Essays may be submitted in either English or French.
There will be three judged categories: Grades 7/8, 9/10, 11/12. One grand prize winner will be chosen from each of the three categories.
Criteria:
Judges are looking for fresh and creative thought and for your ideas to be well supported by examples and explanations. While the main focus of this competition is on ideas, judges will also assess how well your piece is organized and whether you demonstrate effective use of language in presenting your ideas.
Word Limit:
Grades 7/8: 350 words
Grades 9/10: 700 words
Grades 11/12: 1500 words
Plagiarism:
The words you use must be your own. Any evidence of plagiarism will result in automatic disqualification.
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Deadline
All online essay submissions must be received by January 30, 2006 at 5PM EST (Eastern Standard Time).
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Sponsors
Sincere thanks to our generous sponsors:
- The Law Commission of Canada
- Elisabeth Sachs Law Offices
- Sack Goldblatt Mitchell LLP
- Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario
- Cavalluzzo Hayes Shilton McIntyre & Cornish LLP
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Submission Form
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