What’s Roger doing standing on a chair and directing what looks to be a choir?
Whenever we get a call from Beth Peterkin it’s always for something interesting. We’ve done shows at Murphys Point Provincial Park, down the Silver Queen Mica Mine and in the ampitheatre, or maybe in the Perth Museum shooting for the brochure for a Whisky Tasting fund-raiser.
This time we were asked to provide the photography and video services to record the launch of the Lanark County Community Justice Program for schools. (For more on Community Justice, see the end of this post)
It’s always a blast working with happy students
(they got the afternoon off to do this)
We arrived last Friday at St. Francis School in Smiths Falls and were greeted by about 20 enthusiastic students decked out in bright yellow T-shirts. This was going to be a fun photo/video shoot.
It was quite a gathering of funders, community agencies, police, community leaders and politicians and the wonderful students from St. Francis school.
St. Francis School has a room set aside and decorated for restorative justice session.
Students have painted walls with examples of aboriginal art and dreamcatchers can be seen throughout the room.
The centrepiece is a circular rug with words and symbols representing the principles of a restorative community process.
We’ll be producing a short video of the launch for the LCCJP website as well as photographs of the afternoon for brochures and websites.
We will feature the video here in a future issue of our Boost-letter. In the meantime, here’s a gallery of some of the images from the launch.
What’s Community Justice?
It’s an approach for resolving disputes in the community. A restorative approach is used rather than the court system. The Lanark County program has been around since 1997. Their core services involve a court diversion program for both youth and adult offenders. Referrals come from the OPP, the Town of Smiths Falls police and from the Crown Attorney’s office.
Major funding came from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, The United Way and the Law Foundation of Ontario. The plan is to send trained volunteers into each school and youth centre throughout Lanark County and the Town of Smiths Falls. They will work with school administrators, teachers, youth, parents and youth workers to promote the use of restorative approaches.
For more info Click Here
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