Y4Y Quebec Helps English-Speaking Youth Thrive!

In 2018, Le Journal de Montreal commissioned a poll that revealed some discouraging figures about English-speaking Quebec youth. According to that poll, about 60% of respondents were considering leaving Quebec due to tensions between the anglophone and francophone communities.

That’s bad news for the Quebec economy at a time of record low unemployment rates, when finding top talent is more challenging than ever. Especially since many of the anglophones leaving the province, or considering leaving, are well educated, bilingual young people – people who could potentially fill some of those gaps in the labour market.

Y4Y (youth for youth) Quebec is a provincial non-profit youth network aimed at English-speaking Quebecers between the ages of 16 to 30. Their mission is to address the issues and concerns facing anglophone youth in the province, and build a sense of community and belonging among them. Through this mission, Y4Y hopes to help this demographic reach their fullest potential within the province, so that they ultimately decide to stay in Quebec.

So, what of bilingualism and support of the French language? Through their own research, Y4Y has found that anglophone youth are actually big supporters of bilingualism, with over 90% of poll respondents saying they believed that learning both English and French is important to Quebec youth. Over 50% expressed an interest in improving their French proficiency, and several more expressed confidence in their current French-language skills.

With such interest in learning French and, in many cases, existing bilingualism, why do so many anglophone youth consider leaving? Both Le Journal’s poll and Y4Y’s research uncovered a disconnect with Quebec society. The Journal respondents claimed tensions between the anglophone and francophone communities to be concerning, while over 80% of Y4Y respondents expressed a moderate to non-existent attachment to Quebec society.

This disconnect is what Y4Y is working to remedy.

Through their work, they hope to inspire English-speaking youth to build the confidence to begin taking on more leadership roles throughout the province.

Despite the tensions (or perceived tensions), many Quebec youth of both communities want the same thing: a vibrant, dynamic society with strong leadership, a healthy economy and a growing labour market, where francophone language and culture are celebrated, and learning both languages is accessible to all.

Bridging the gap between the communities is how this becomes possible, and it is organizations like Y4Y that are leading the effort.

If you would like to know more about Y4Y, join the network, or otherwise get involved, visit their website or drop by their offices at 5964 avenue Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.

“Y4Y is now offering internships on an ongoing basis for cegep and university students in communications, marketing, political science, social sciences, and related fields. Please send your CV and a brief letter of intent to [email protected] with the subject heading “Request for Internship” ?

Founder | Marketer | Speaker | Best Selling Author | University Instructor

With a passion for exploration and sharing new discoveries, I founded Montrealtips.com, with proceeds going to the UN Refugee Agency, Montreal Children’s Hospital and other causes. I am also involved with NGOs & charities in Canada & worldwide.

Tarek on Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter

April 29, 2019/by T Riman

Author, Entrepreneur, Speaker

Entrepreneurs & Business Owners: Do You Know the Secret to Capitalizing on Analytics?

If you own a business today, odds are you have a website for that business. Whether you are selling something directly online, taking reservations, offering downloads, conducting your entire business online, or simply providing information about your product or services, it is so important to understand how your website is performing and how people are interacting with it.

Why? Because having this insight will help you:

Understand where new customers or site visitors are coming from;
See which elements of your site are performing best, and which need to be improved;
Gain insight into when interest (not just sales) spikes for your products or services, so that you can capitalize on those spikes;
See what elements of your site people interact with most;
See where you are losing people on your site, so that you can plug those leaks;
Get clarity on how your site is performing in search engines;
Identify the content or pages that are most engaging to your visitors (and which are not);
And so much more.

Google Analytics is an amazing, user-friendly and free tool that helps you get this powerful and actionable insight into your business’s online presence. But… what is Google Analytics? How do you set it up? How do you use it? What do you do with the data and insights it provides?

Montreal Tips own Tarek Riman has the answers for you in his upcoming book, The Secret to Capitalizing on Analytics: A Web Analytics Approach for Beginners.

This book is designed to help start-ups, entrepreneurs, students and more get started with analytics and understand how to extract and act on the most useful data. There was a time when massive marketing budgets meant Fortune 500s had an absolute edge on smaller competition. Today, free tools like Google Analytics empower businesses of just about any size to compete on a grander scale, by arming them with invaluable market insights to continually optimize their online presence.

There is so much value packed into this book for anyone who wants to get an edge on the competition, or even to add valuable knowledge and skills to their career toolkit.

If you or someone you know could benefit from an accessible and complete beginner’s guide to analytics, The Secret to Capitalizing on Analytics is now available for pre-order, and will start shipping in print and digital format on April 21st, 2019.

If you want to win, don’t miss this!

April 19, 2019/by Melissa Dawn

Artist, Empowering Women, Woman Entrepreneurs

Convergence: Arts, Neuroscience, and Society a thrilling Artscie double exhibition!

Convergence: Arts, Neuroscience, and Society a thrilling Artscie double exhibition!

This Friday the first of two inter-intra-trans-disciplinary vernissage happenings will take place at the Visual Voice Gallery at 5 pm. From April 12th to the 27th students form the DART 498: Art+Neuroscience+Culture course taught at Concordia University will be exhibiting their collaborative works in two venues, as mention one is the Visual Voice Gallery at the famous artsy Belgo Building (yes according to Wikipedia this building houses the biggest number of Contemporary Art Galleries in Canada) and the second venue is the Black Box space at Concordia University.

The DART course is in interdisciplinary class that invites students to creatively explore the intersection of arts, neuroscience, and society, and how these domains shape the understandings of ourselves and others. Concordia Fine Arts students work with the RI-MUHC Brain Repair and Integrative Neuroscience program (BRaIN) and McGill Neuroscience students within the Convergence, Perceptions of Neuroscience initiative to create self-directed, collaborative projects which converging artistic and scientific research.

The course combines lectures, debates, site visits, and independent study to encourage all participants to understand and discover territories outside their artistic or scientific comfort zones. The course develops in two terms, where the final work for the artists during the first term consists on creating an artistic response to one of the neuroscience lectures taught. Then, the final projects after the two terms consist on a collaborative project where neuroscience students share their research to inspire the art students. Thus, artists and neuroscientist work hand in hand to produce a piece where convergence actually occurs.

“Our main purpose is to create a connection, a convergence, between different areas of society to make neuroscience research more accessible to the public and to give to our students the opportunity to communicate their research, learn, and acquire a broad perspective from highly skilled artists as well as the public, in the process.”

www.convergenceinitiative.org

One of the projects we want to especially acknowledge on this post is Self-flow, a resulting ongoing series of paintings portraying blood vessels with actual blood ink* from the artist Lily Jiménez-Dabdoub.

*Blood was extracted in a safe environment by health professionals— MD. Fernanda and nurse Freddy Jáuregui— who the artists thank. They also encourage those struggling to reach out to professional counselling services.

Self-Flow sensitizes the viewer and connects them with mental health, thus confronting their existing stigmas. Self-Flow is a series of four light boxes containing three layers of organic papers (bamboo, silk and hemp) where images of Liam’s brightfield micrographs of human brain blood vessels (revealed using CD31 immunostaining) were translated by Lily into Sumi-e brush strokes. Then, Liam’s contour drawings were engraved in the glass. The containment of this work represents the contained emotions people suffering from mental health disorders experience due to social stigma. The images are lit to acknowledge these emotions.

Self-Flow unveils a state of peace and creative flow. Human blood* as an ink suits both creators who wanted to portrait its’ emotional intensity and dynamism. The blood degrading colour shows a similarity to the 3,3′-Diaminobenzidine (DAB) staining tint in Liam’s micrograph images and Lily’s own personal experience with depression and anxiety.

Finally, to mention all the works you will find at this thrilling exhibition:

Urban DNA

by Deirdre Hatton (Neuroscience student) and Laura Rosero (Artist). An experimental piece involving volunteer participation and the urban landscape. Urban DNA project aims to investigate the effect of certain genetic mutations on how we navigate through the city.

The Cookie Theft

by Marielle McCrum (Speech Therapist) and Rochelle Panganiban (Artist). Using a common language assessment tool as its base, The Cookie Theft: Case Studies takes invented responses to the test image and depicts them visually. Each script represents different types and severities of communication disorders that could occur following a neurological event such as a stroke.

MS and the Invisible

by Elena Lin (Neuroscience student) and Maria Mathioudakis (Artist). Multiple sclerosis is a debilitating yet often non-communicable disease that attacks the central nervous system. The etiology is not well-understood, and the biological mechanisms that underlie the disorder complex. Of note are immune cells that interact with the nervous system and the profound impact the cells can have in the exacerbation or mitigation of symptoms experienced by patients. The artists were inspired by the contours of moving cells recorded via microscopy: the waves that cells make and their purposeful undulations through space. Using the medium of wire, Mathioudakis and Lin not only capture the idiosyncrasies of cell morphology but also the interplay between what is visible/perceptible (the solidity of the medium) and invisible (the negative space framed and shadows formed). The artwork concomitantly explores concepts of cell-cell interactions in the microscopic world and the macroscopic phenomenology of patient experiences – ultimately bringing into light the pain individuals with multiple sclerosis endure.

Synapsense

by Raina Fan and Erin McKenzie Wall (Neuroscience students), Maya Moussall and Alice Perichon (Artists)

All these works are part of the Visual Voice Gallery exhibition from April 12 – 27, 2019

Vernissage: April 12, 2019, 5 pm – 7 pm

Belgo Building, 372 Ste-Catherine Street West, space 421, Montreal QC, H2V 2K8

The second vernissage will take place on April 27th at The Black Box Space at Concordia University.

Black Box

Exhibition: April 19 – 28, 2019

Vernissage: April 25, 2019, 5 pm – 7 pm

Art & science symposium: April 27, 2019

Concordia University, EV OS3-845/855, 1515 Ste-Catherine West, Montreal QC H3G 2W1

The works you will find here are:

Alien Agency

by Naila Kuhlmann and Zahraa Chorghay (neuroscience students) and the Matthew Halpenny and Matthew Saleciak (Artists).

Sensenet is a conceptual piece realized as an experiential installation, based on the concepts of alien agency in art (a property where the artwork takes on its own meaning, outside the creator’s intent) and the motif of timing and synchrony in neural circuits. By gathering and manipulating data on the senses gathered from participants within the installation environment in real time, Sensenet subverts the individual’s perception and encourages synchronization of the collective senses, thus challenging concepts of identity and consciousness.

🐸 👓 🧠 Frog’s Eye Viewer

by Vanessa Li (Neuroscience student) and Natacha Vieilleux (Artist)

A playful insight into how the developing visual system of a tadpole functions and evolves. In this imaginary tadpole sporting a single giant eye, visual neurons are represented by an army of colourful frogs.

Salience

by Yuting Zhang (Neuroscience student) and Ryan Bruggeman (Artist)

The Network

by Erin McKenzie Wall (Neuroscience student), Giuliana Greto and Tania Marquez (Artists)

Harvesting the Mind Through the Passage of Time

by Morteza Pishnamazi (Neuroscience student) and Tania Marquez (Artist)

Starlight Gone

by Liam O’Leary (Neuroscience student) and Elizabeth Parent

Case and Control

by Kathryn Vaillancourt (Neuroscience student) and Alessandro (Tarek) Ghaleb-Debello (Artist)

April 11, 2019/by T Riman

Empowering Women, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurs, Woman Entrepreneurs

SPOTLIGHT: Kidtabulous – Caring and creative mobile childcare for events!

Parents, have you ever been to Ikea and found yourself weighing the euphoric joy of shopping kid-free with the inevitable pink eye they’re going to get from the ball pit?

We all know that kids mean sacrifice, often of our personal freedoms, social opportunities and even opportunities to expand our horizons, skills and interests. Those sticky, whiny, bouncy, shrieking bundles of absolute joy truly are the most meaningful parts of our lives, and I for one would make the sacrifice over and over again. But boy do I ever love getting a break from them!

So when I came across Kidtabulous… holy cow. It’s almost worth planning a wedding all over again just so I can use their amazing service!

What is it?

Kidtabulous is a mobile child care service specifically for events – weddings, conferences, festivals, workshops, office parties, seminars and more.

Many parents don’t have a relative or trusted babysitter to leave their kids with, so offering quality, reliable and FUN child care at events makes them a lot more accessible to parents. It also allows kids to be a part of special events – weddings, christenings, reunions, graduations, etc. – in a way that really is fun for them. Because what four year old has ever sat quietly through speeches?

What they offer

There are different packages available, all of which can be customized according to the number of kids your expect, the length of time child care will be needed, how involved you want kids to be, etc.

You can opt for one of their pop-up playrooms that come with toys, games, craft supplies and activities, and allow kids to run wild without disturbing the event. There is also a kid’s table option that lets kids be part of the event (ideal for kid friendly weddings, family reunions, showers or festivals), but allows them a space just for them with toys and activities to keep them engaged. There is also an animated babysitting service so kids can be part of an event, or stay in the comfort of a hotel room or other personal space.

All options come with qualified, caring animators who are “expert nose wipers, sillies-shaker-outters, ‘use your words’ reminder-ers, and fun-stuff-to-do developers.” They take the time to get to know the children and find activities that keep them engaged, happy and having a great time.

They bring all the supplies and equipment, you provide the kids!

By moms, for moms (and dads)

Kidtabulous is owned by entrepreneur, I-yatah Holness. As an entrepreneur and mother herself, increasing the accessibility of social participation for mothers of young children is an initiative near and dear to I-yatah’s heart. Kidtabulous is all about opening doors for parents by ensuring kids aren’t just cared for, but are truly enjoying themselves while parents get the freedom to turn their full focus to the event.

She knows that parents want to feel good about where they’re leaving their children, and who they’re leaving them with. She knows they’ll want to check in and will want to chat with caregivers and tell them about their child. She knows they want their children to feel comfortable, happy and as at-home as possible. And that’s exactly what Kidtabulous aims to provide.

For your next event…

Whether it’s your office team building event, the company BBQ, your wedding or anniversary, annual conference, or any event that parents might attend, check out Kidtabulous, get a free quote, and consider how much you gain by opening up your event to even more people, and providing a truly unique and incredible service. Pink eye ball pits not included ;-)

March 20, 2019/by T Riman