Four St. Albert students plan to use the power of the web, M&Ms and $4,000 this spring to give young Albertans some empowering self-talk.
Paige Thomson, Lauren Marks, Briana Leibel and Tori Cruickshank of Ă©cole SĂ©condaire Saint Marguerite d’Youville won a $4,000 grant last week as part of the Empowering Self-Talk Initiative. The initiative challenged local students to come up with ways to help youth improve their self-esteem.
Thomson, 15, said she was very excited when she learned of the win and swiftly texted all her friends about it.
“We were all kind of screaming a bit,” she said.
Edmonton philanthropist Larry Anderson said he started the contest this year in order to help students help themselves. He plans to take it province-wide next year, with a goal of helping a million kids by 2020.
Anderson said he struggled as a teenager, having grown up in an alcoholic family and dropped out of high school.
“I was an expert about what I wasn’t,” he said. “I knew I wasn’t an athlete. I knew I wasn’t one of the smart kids.”
When he was 19, he realized that he had to focus on his strengths and potentials instead.
“What I needed to do was become an expert on who I was.”
He finished university and started a successful construction business. Now retired, he does extensive charity work with local youth.
“Self-talk is the conversation that goes on inside your head,” Anderson explained.
Social pressures when you’re a teenager can turn that talk against you, leading to bullying, dropping out and drug use.
“I had a premise that the high-school students themselves would be able to help other students improve their self-talk,” Anderson said.
Working with the Edmonton school boards, he asked local schools to send in two-minute videos on how they could improve student self-talk.
“We were blown away,” he said, as they got 21 strong entries. The four winners have each received $4,000 to implement their proposals this spring.
Anderson was not involved with picking the winners, but said the local entry was comprehensive, showed a clear understanding of youth issues and sought to address them with tools kids already used.
“It was definitely one of the top four,” he said.
The fact that it was done by four 15-year-olds was a bonus.
The team’s video is an upbeat, colourful production with intentionally hammy acting – significantly different from the serious, almost grim tone of the other winners. It took about a week to produce, Thomson said.
“We wanted to make it more exciting and fun so people would want to participate,” she said, which is why they made their pitch so cheerful (and why they put in a gag of Leibel talking into a banana-phone). The team’s name – Team Infinity – reflects the infinite possibilities that come with using self-talk, she added.
The team plans to distribute wristbands and stickers with positive messages on them that will explain their campaign, Thomson said. The stickers will have QR codes that link to their website, which will offer tips on how to improve self-talk. Most students have smartphones, she explained, and these codes will put those tips at their fingertips – literally.
Students will also get to guess the number of M&Ms in a jar as part of a contest. To enter, they will have to post a tip on how to improve their self-talk to the website for others to see. Whomever has the best guess gets the candies, each of which will be custom-printed with a positive message on the back.
The team now needs to fine-tune its plans, build its website and order its materials, Thomson said. They hope to launch the project by February.
Thomson said the team plans to keep the project going for as long as they’re in high-school, and hopes future classes will continue it.
“Even if we can help just a few people have a better life, it’ll be all worth it,” she said.
Team Infinity’s entry can be seen at www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXFhsaq3AYU.
