U of T in the community: 100 in 1 day

100 in 1 Day, a social movement that started out in Bogota, Colombia, and spread all the way to Toronto this June, saw hundreds of Torontonians working together to transform the city.

With the University of Toronto acting as both host and participant in the one-day festival of citizen-driven change, many U of T students were keen to join in, designing their own “interventions” across the city. Among them were Peace by PEACE volunteers and Alternative Reading Week 2015 project leaders, who recounted their experience for U of T News.

Peace by PEACE volunteers from the University of Toronto have been going into elementary school classrooms to teach children about conflict, choice, and consequence since 1997. To encourage children to think about how they fit into communities, the volunteers use what they call "the community crest activity", in which a crest is built from pieces that the children have made.

When 100 in 1 Day rolled around, they took the community crest to the streets.

“We asked everyone who passed by to write or draw what they thought made communities strong and pieced their answers together to form a giant crest,” said Louis Train, Peace by PEACE campus director.

Ideas ranged from Native influences to beaches and everything in between, including adversity, food, communication, kids, freedom to love, helping, trust, music, dogs, compassion, and more. In total, the crest has almost 300 pieces, each one unique. And, to make sure it truly represents the ever-changing nature of communities, the crest has no definite borders.

“It is always ready to grow and change shape should we choose to add anything to it,” said Train, who is going into his fourth year at U of T studying Philosophy, English and Writing & Rhetoric.

Leading a Peace by PEACE activity out of the classroom was not without challenges – including a salsa class that abruptly started at the intersection where they were working.

Lesson learned?

“People can be uncomfortable when approached by strangers,” said Train, “but, also, everyone has something to say."

At the other end of the city, a group of Alternative Reading Week 2015 project leaders headed down to Leuty Avenue by the beach to try their hand at painting and sewing flags for the Bread & Butter Bunting project led by Daily Flag.

“The goals of this intervention were to raise awareness of hunger and poverty, and encourage people to support local food banks and the role they play in such issues in the city,” said Jody Chan, a fourth-year student in Physics and Philosophy, and a program intern at the Centre for Community Partnerships.

It was the bunting to end all buntings, according to Chan, as dozens of community members and passing beachgoers contributed their own flags to the project. At the end of several hours of hard work and many tubes of paint, the final product was a bunting with over 100 unique, beautiful flags. The bunting will be hanging up on Leuty Avenue for the rest of the summer, after which it will be auctioned off and the proceeds will go directly to Daily Bread Food Bank.

“We had a blast unleashing our inner children and rediscovering long-lost artistic abilities,” said Chan, “but, most of all, meeting friendly and welcoming community members whose dedication made this project and others like it possible.”