PRINCE ALBERT — Princess Margaret School hosted the LiveDifferent organization and their 'Circles’ Presentation recently.
LiveDifferent, a Canadian charity dedicated to empowering youth, is bringing its Circles mental wellness program to schools across the country. Rhiannon Taylor is from Scotland and is the road team leader with LiveDifferent. She said LiveDifferent’s mental wellness initiative offers on-site assemblies and peer mentorship programming designed to inspire purpose, connection and resilience.
Taylor said that their goal is to get youth connected to each other and the world around them as well finding a purpose.
"We're travelling around Canada and we try to spread compassion, (and) kindness,” Taylor said. “We have a different theme each year within our team. This year, the theme of the presentation is going to be ‘What Really Matters.’”
The presentation goes through three stages. The first is having students define what matters most to them. They are then asked to refine these ideas and then challenge them to design a life that embodies what matters most.
"So it's all about them,” Taylor said. “(It’s) not us telling them what is important, but more to get them to reflect on what they think, and then because we want them to, reflect on that and then live that out within life.”
The Circles program focuses on addressing the growing mental health challenges young people face, including issues like anxiety, depression, bullying, and feelings of isolation. LiveDifferent aims to meet this need by fostering a sense of belonging, purpose, and compassion among students.
They do this through interactive elements like games and a large three-screen video presentation. They also do additional workshops that dive deeper in, but that was not part of the presentation at Princess Margaret.
This year’s theme, “What Really Matters?” encourages youth to explore their values and potential through interactive activities, group discussions, and compassion projects. Circles not only empowers students to take proactive steps toward their mental well-being but also fosters stronger peer-to-peer relationships, building more compassionate and resilient school communities.
Taylor said that each school’s presentation is very different.
"We have interactive elements like Family Feud as well, so we get the students and teachers to kind of do a competition and they have to answer the survey, what was the top things that student thought was like the most important things in their lives and a little bit of competition there,” she explained.
The four-person team is from Scotland, Ontario and Alberta. LiveDifferent has been travelling around Canada for 20 years. They also share personal stories.
"Each team, no matter what the theme is, we share three personal stories within each presentation and the personal stories are going to reflect the theme,” Taylor said. “Within hours, we all talk about maybe values that we found or shifting our mindset to embody values or changing our lives.”
Taylor said that the most important aspect of the Circles presentation was the life stories of presenters.
"We sometimes share about times when we've been going through difficult times, and we're really vulnerable within that,” she explained.
“There can be very maybe like things that aren't usually talked about in schools that could be to do with maybe like loss or grief or abuse and things. But they're done in a very beautiful kind of way where people just go on stage (and) they're authentic.”
She explained that the authenticity of the stories allows students to realize that they are not alone.
"They can see someone else and be like, ‘Oh, someone else is actually going through things I'm struggling with at home.’ We'll try and get those students to realize they're not alone as well as well as motivating on a cause just thinking about all the things that they're going through as well,” she said.
"You can become resilient and stronger from it is a big part of our message,” Taylor added.
She explained that Friday’s presentation also tried to get students to find a purpose and a cause.
"We give that through examples of things that we do because we do work in Mexico and we do work in Dominican Republic,” Taylor said.
‘We try and do that to get them on board with many things that we are doing, but we also just try and motivate them to find a cause within their school.”
Students from Grades 5 to 8 from Princess Margaret, WJ Berezowsky and Riverside attended. Taylor said it was beneficial for more than one school to attend because then the students could interact.
They spent yesterday in Wakaw School. The tour goes from September to December and takes Christmas off and then starts again in the second semester from mid-January until the start of June.
