Internet Project: My activisim and its connections to the world wide web

My social activism and its connection to the internet started out fairly small and my efforts have for the most part been local to Lethbridge Alberta.

I think this is important because as a close friend and mentor said to me once said:

"To even hope at changing the world, we must first change those around us and our community,
then our province, then our country and then we can worry about changing the world."

I have very much geared my activism towards this saying.

It was this same mentor that first got me involved in the Southwest Youth Network Advisory Panel
or SYNAP. This was panel for Youth (ages 15-21) in region 1 of Alberta (Alberta is devided into 10 regions that things like health boards used to be dependent on) which went as far north as Medicine Hat and as far south as Milk River I believe. In any case the Youth Panel in this region gave youth a voice to give feedback and advice on everything from health care, school boards and the provincial budget to raising awareness and support for local Youth organizations. In my time on SYNAP we held an event that raised almost 30 000$ for Woods Homes Youth Shelter here in Lethbridge.
Unfortunately due to "Steady" Premier Ed Stelmach's slashing the budget for social programs over the past 3-4 years SYNAP was disbanded as too expensive to sustain.

Fortunately I became involved the provincial wide Youth Panel that had first proposed each region getting an advisory panel, this was called the Youth Advisory Panel of Alberta. Again its for youth ages 16-21 and selects youth from all over the province to give advice on the issues I mentioned before but more so on a provincial scale and less with a focus on raising awareness and support. Here is a website with more information and an on line application: http://www.child.alberta.ca/home/919.cfm

Throughout my time on these two panels I was (and still am) very passionate about public high school and middle school reform. Focusing very much on the prior. This passion led me to a conference regarding High School Completion and how this can be promoted. Thankfully the youth at this conference must have been heard for in next couple of years the Education branch of the Alberta government created the Speak Out movement. This movement is dedicated to hearing specifically from High School students about how to improve the High Schools of Alberta. I was apart of one of their yearly conferences as well as a member of their forum and posted under the user name "X". I had some good dialogues and learned things and I hope people learned from me. I have since stopped posting as I feel I am almost too far removed from the high school system and I've only been gone 3 years, yet parents and educators create the system without any input of those apart of this system. Despite the movement this is still changing at less than a crawl. Here is the main website for the Speak Out website: http://www.speakout.alberta.ca/Forum/tabid/136/Default.aspx

It was somewhere in the midst of all these volunteer efforts that I learned of the Zeitgeist movement. It was actually the movie titled Zeitgeist I first heard of and watched. It gave voice and evidence to many beliefs I had unfounded at the time and to this day the first movie has over 100 million views world wide. Here is the aim of the movie project from the movies free website: http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/project.html and this is the page for the movement itself (the movie is merely one part of it): http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_con...

And here is what the movement believes and why:

Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQBdySgqoO0

Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dhtLd4pwyk

Part 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haciEFRUwUY

The first movie (of, as of now, a trilogy) just titled Zeitgeist the Movie, was a three part examination into some of the most eleborate lies we have ever been asked to believe, including religion, the official 9/11 report and the closed doors dealings pushing us towards a one world government. Here are the initial pieces of each to give you some idea.

The Greatest Story Ever told (A): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNf-P_5u_Hw

All the Worlds a Stage (A): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na3NsKqnkIA

Don't Mind the Men Behind the Curtain (A): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho6VNvGsEsQ

The Zeitgeist movement didn't simply end at illuminating all these problems and in their follow up movie Zeitgeist: Addendum they announce and advocate support for The Venus Project which proposed numerous solutions and focus on a resource, technology based sustainable economy of the future. Here is their website: http://www.thevenusproject.com/the-venus-project-introduction/aims-...

While these are the most globally focused of my beliefs I believe they can and must be applied locally.

Finally in the present day I am involved with the City of Lethbridge's Youth Advisory Council. Again we provide a voice for youth and act as an advisory board that those presenting to city council can utilize as well as a resource city council can refer presenters too, We have also made a press release regarding recent hazing incidents and are currently in the process of building and instituting a Youth Center here in Lethbridge.

So thats my work in a nutshell. Questions?