Create a Meme
Create a short and effective message by placing captions on pictures (often well-known images) to get your point across. Share your image around the school.
Culture Jamming
Take a subtle approach to spreading a message by leaving informational materials in places where people will see them.
Great Graffiti
Use the expressive qualities of graffiti to allow students to speak up about a theme related to growth and development (e.g., body image, diversity, healthy relationships, and self-esteem).
Happy Hello Letters
Write a happy hello letter to your school or your community. Organizers send or post the letters at a predetermined (surprise) time in the future. Respect and appreciation toward yourself and others are important themes in this activity. The shift in perspective from focusing on flaws to celebrating the fabulous is powerful.
Paint It
Use your creative talents to paint ceramic tiles with positive words, phrases, or messages. Consider using one of the Draw-The-Line resources as a starting message, or one of the terms from the It Starts With You glossary.
Poster Parade
Use a poster competition to examine the themes from growth and development, such as diversity, healthy relationships, consent, or bystander actions.
Choose a theme and have students create their own interpretations in poster form. Then have the posters judged by a panel of peers or experts from the community. Another option is to recreate/redesign existing posters in a variety of styles.
Show Some "SWAG"ger
Put your message on a button, t-shirt, temporary tattoo, sticker, pen, locker mirror, or other product that you think people might want to use.
Tell It With Photos
Take photos in your school and community that demonstrate themes such as diversity, positive body image, self-esteem, and positive space. Photos could be of people holding up signs with their answers to the question written on them.
Awareness Clothesline
A way to raise awareness surrounding key statistics related to growth and development in your community by hanging information in a prominent space. Anything that has facts or statistics works with this activity; for example, the number of LGBTQ youth that commit suicide in Canada, the number of Canadian women and/or men who will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime, and diversity in your community represented country flags.
This activity can be used to raise awareness of an important topic, highlight a call to action, or celebrate diversity in your community.
Gender Unicorn Characters
A creative way for students to express how they view gender, sexuality, attraction, and the expression of these ideas by making connections to a known media or literary character that don’t conform to gender stereotypes. For example, Hagrid in the Harry Potter series presents as stereotypically male (e.g. large, bearded) but says of his pet dragon “he knows his mummy” and carries around a pink umbrella.
Smoothie Day
Serve up healthy smoothies to deliver your message in a delicious way!
Bright Shirt Day
Get noticed during different campaign activities by having many people wear shirts of the same bright colour on the same day.
Safe Space
Create a physical safe space for students to practice mindfulness, learn about chosen growth and development topics, or to simply relax and be in a quiet environment.
The Write Stuff
The written word can be an expressive and healing medium to address social issues related to growth and development. Call for submissions based on topics specific to those in your school community (e.g., body image, self-esteem, healthy relationships).
Pledge It
Work with the whole school community to promote and commit to a message about not staying silent or about taking positive actions. Create a banner with a specific tagline or message. It could be a pledge like “I will not stay silent about dating violence.” or “I will make someone feel good about themselves today.”