Officer arm-wrestles youth participant from Youth/Police Dialogues. OJEN turned 15 this year! Since 2002, OJEN’s programs and resources have impacted the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people throughout Ontario. And we’re just getting started! Looking ahead to 2018 and beyond, we’re excited about opportunities to expand our justice education initiatives to new youth audiences. […]
Read more
Youth from Regent Park Focus -Youth Media Arts Centre combined learning broadcast skills with justice education. The project concluded with participants using their media skills to interview justice professionals and filming them for television segments. OJEN turned 15 this year! Since 2002, OJEN’s programs and resources have impacted the lives of hundreds of thousands of […]
OJEN turned 15 this year! We’re celebrating: 15 years of justice education programs province-wide; 15 years of free classroom resources for high school teachers; 15 years of meaningful volunteer opportunities for legal professionals; 15 years of preparing young people to become legally capable Canadian citizens! Since 2002, our programs and resources have impacted the lives […]
Throughout October, OJEN is accepting donations in memory of Tate Herbert. Who was Tate Herbert Tate Herbert was 20 years old when he lost his life to cancer in 2013. He was an active, fun-loving young man with an infectious sense of humour. His youthful interest in justice was beginning to transform into a life purpose. He was in […]
First Nations students from Dennis Franklin Cromarty high school learned about how to file police complaints. They shared this information with the larger community by interviewing Nishnawbe Aski Legal Services Executive Director, Celina Reitberger, on the radio. The show was broadcast on Wawatay Radio and you can listen to a recording of it below! […]
In late November of last year, the Law Society of Nunavut (LSN), in partnership with the Ontario Justice Education Network (OJEN), ran a pilot program for a capacity-development initiative aimed at Inuit youth in the community of Hall Beach. Over three days, students from middle school to high school grappled with challenging ideas about citizenship […]
OJEN was funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation (OTF) to put together a Law and Radio Project with two pilots for First Nations students. The first pilot ran this October at Matawa Learning Centre in Thunder Bay. In the project the students choose a legal topic and then spend four sessions learning about the topic, writing interview questions and practicing […]
“Reconciliation to me, means that we walk together on a path.” These were the words, spoken by an elder in Rat Portage First Nation, that have remained with me throughout my work in northwestern Ontario. I visited Rat Portage for an Elders Forum put on by a small grassroots initiative called Reconciliation Kenora. The words […]
The classroom was like any classroom. The desks had chairs attached. There were a couple of loose papers on the floor. Stacks of paper on the teacher’s desk. The students were quiet at the beginning but it quickly turned into chaos, that beautiful kind of chaos, where true learning happens. The students had moved the […]
Presenting information to youth audiences can be exciting and dynamic. But, if I am being honest, it can also be a little intimidating. The students have many other things to think about and distractions abound. It can be tough to communicate a nuanced message on a legal issue without losing their interest. Talking at a […]
Having worked with a few different youth groups, facilitating public legal education (PLE) workshops and presentations, one thing is quite evident: youth are eager to learn about the justice system and how they fit into it. “Where do I learn what my rights are?” Variations of this question are always asked by our youth, regardless […]
