Workshops
Global Issues Workshops
Media Awareness
Media doesn’t always tell us what to think, but it often tells us what to think about. This workshop examines the implications of concentrated media ownership and how that may affect public perception and attitudes. It challenges youth to question media bias, to think critically about what’s included and not included in our mediated world and to look at alternative options for gathering information.
De-constructing/Re-constructing Media
Through collage and role-play techniques, participants explore how advertising, corporate ownership and other aspects of our media-saturated world impact their view of themselves and others. Through this process, participants will learn to recognize the ways they can reclaim this representation and tell their own stories.
The Rich and the Rest Of Us: Youth, Income, Equality, and Our Rights
From Newcomer rights to raising minimum wage to corporate power: learn about the roots of poverty AND build skills, knowledge and creative ways to be a part of overcoming it!
Health Care: The Price is Right?
Health care has been a right in the past, but will it stay that way? This workshop engages participants in lively discussion, games and role-playing to develop an understanding of the Canadian Health Care System and the looming threat of privatization. Participants will learn about what we can do to protect our health care from the coffers of business and keep it in the hands of all people.
Climate Change
What is it, what causes it and what is our part in it? From light bulbs to consumerism to global shipping to global inequities, we look at the complex issue of climate change and how we can make a meaningful difference.
Sweatshops
A workshop that looks at the race to the bottom in the global economy and examines the conditions that sweatshop workers work in. We look critically at the process of putting profit before people and discuss what youth can do to take action.
Sweatshops: Dressing for a Difference
Participants explore existing campaigns to eliminate sweatshops, while identifying their own capacity to have an impact on this issue. During each workshop, students generate an action plan that they can implement in their school, increasing awareness of and making a difference in the fight against sweatshop exploitation in garment and product manufacturing.
Globalization 101 
This workshop introduces participants to what economic globalization is and how it affects youth. Through role-plays, skits, brainstorms and discussions participants have fun while learning about economics, trade, sweatshops and democracy and how these are all related under the umbrella of globalization.
Visioning and Taking Action
The Sea Of Change
The Sea of Change is a popular education exercise that can be used as a tool to help groups do visioning and build strategies for working together. It is a creative exercise that takes participants through building a river of change between the injustices in today’s world and the ideal world they would like to see. The process can be used to tackle a range of issues. Time and Size of Group: This workshop can be done for groups ranging between about 10 and 120. This workshop can be done to help a small and intimate group of people who work together frequently to do visioning and establish short and long-term goals. It can also be used at conferences or meetings of people who don’t know each other well to determine what some of the common challenges are and how they might be collectively or individually overcome.
Mapping Power: Taking Action
Using mapping techniques, participants create a visual representation of an issue that matters to them. They will then identify a specific way that they can impact that issue and map out the steps to taking action. This process includes questions such as, Who has power to influence or change this issue?, How can I access these sources of power? and How can I share my knowledge about this issue with others? This workshop is designed for a group with a specific issue or goal that they would like to explore. Past topics include planning to have a school cafeteria serve local organic foods.
Workshops under revision
Commercialization of Education (under revision) 
This workshop examines issues of access to education and increased corporate sponsorship of public education and how this influences the commodification of our social values. Students will be able to discuss exclusive deals between corporations and high schools, why they’re being signed and what the concerns are around them.
Genetic Engineering and Food Security 
This workshop focuses on the patenting of life forms and the potential implications of genetic engineering on humans and the environment. It also addresses the globalization of the food industry and the concerns of local control of food resources.
Tar Sands 
There is a lot of buzz about the boom in the tar sands – but what does this development mean for the rights of people and the environment here and abroad? Some of us at Check Your Head went to Alberta to ask just that. We’ll share with you what we learned.
