The Young Canadians Roundtable on Health, in partnership with The Sandbox Project, Healthy Debate and the Healthy Communities Initiative, are once again looking for youth ages 12 to 25 for the continuation of our project called “In Their Own Words – Reflections by Youth on the Pandemic.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge and lasting effect on the entire Canadian population. It dominates the national conversation. Many voices have been heard in the media, including health professionals, scientists, politicians, media personalities and other adults. Yet, there is one group whose stories have not been told, and whose perspectives have not been sought – Canada’s youth. This is in spite of the fact that youth will be forced to deal with the long term and lasting consequences of the pandemic.
We want to partner with youth from communities across Canada to provide a direct platform to share their experiences and stories during the COVID-19 pandemic. These stories will be published in a featured Special Series on Healthy Debate – Canada’s online source for journalism about health care – to amplify youths’ voices and to generate awareness among their fellow Canadians about young people’s pandemic experiences.
Youth story submissions can be in any form including written pieces, visual art, music, video and/or audio. Youth who participate and are selected to showcase their story will receive monetary compensation once the project is made live.
Deadline for submissions is November 18th at 11:59pm. Youth will receive a $60 honorarium for submitting to our project.
How to join
Submission Guidelines:
Youth ages 12 to 25 are invited to share their stories and experiences throughout the pandemic in their preferred multimedia format:
Writing: Written submissions must be no longer than 500 words and can take any format e.g. poetry, essay, creative writing, etc. Pieces can be submitted by email to ycrh@sandboxproject.ca. If you wish to mail your submission, please contact us directly for further instruction.
Audio and Video: All audio and video files must be maximum three minutes. Please ensure that audio files are .mp3 or .m4a format and video files are .mp4, .m4a, or .avi format. You may email the file to ycrh@sandboxproject.ca or if the file is too large, please upload onto a file transfer service (e.g. WeTransfer, Dropbox, Google Drive), and email the file link to ycrh@sandboxproject.ca.
Art: Your piece can take any visual art form (painting, digital illustration, sculpture, etc.). If your art is a physical piece, please take a photo or scan it and submit it by email to ycrh@sandboxproject.ca. If you don’t have access to a phone with a camera or a scanner, please contact us and we can help you with resources to submit your piece.
A consent form needs to be submitted with your piece to be included in our project. If there is no consent form, your submission will not be considered. Consent forms can be found at In Their Own Words — The Sandbox Project.
