As the province tightened restrictions to slow the spread of COVID-19, Joe Dueck knew his youth centre would have to find a new way to connect with the city’s teens as other social opportunities fell through.
“We knew that this would also be really hard for our city's youth (because) they lost so many things that they love to do in a short amount of time, all their sports and music and drama and all this stuff they were looking forward to,” said Dueck.
After having to cancel drop-ins and weekend programs, Joe’s Place Youth Centre came up with the idea of the Isolation Olympics to keep teens connected while they’re out of school and stuck at home.
The premise focuses on two-week contests and three-day contests, inviting teens in Moose Jaw to harness their creative abilities and keep busy with some new challenges — like the currently running karaoke contest, aptly named Social Distance-Sing, on until April 1.
“We have a whole month of contests and competitions lined up to keep the youth busy and upbeat,” said Dueck.
The Lego contest just ended and featured entries from youths like a collection of Lego built out of fruit and a whole Lego town, plus the art contest that asked youths to share photos of their artwork will wrap up on April 3.
And there’s even more competition coming: a photo contest, a video contest, a voice-over contest, a writing contest, a trick shot competition, and even a meme contest.
“We've even got some sweet prizes for each contest and then each participant is entered to win a 55 inch Smart TV,” said Dueck.
All of the online-based events coming up at Joe's Place Youth Centre are listed on this calendar. (supplied)That’s also where the youth centre is hosting weekly movie nights on Tuesdays at 7 p.m., where youths stream a movie together and talk about it in the chat, and also where youths can get together to play video games every Thursday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Right now, the game of choice is Fortnite because the game's developer Epic Games has given Joe’s Place access to its custom matchmaking feature.
“That means that a hundred of our youth can all play Fortnite against each other at once, and that's a really rare thing to get,” said Dueck.
Dueck promises that this is just the beginning, and Joe’s Place will continue to brainstorm new ideas for online engagement as long as is needed.
“We love our city's youth and we want to continue to invest in them and let them know that we are all in this together,” said Dueck. “We want to make sure that these youth know that they're not alone. That's the key.”
Any Moose Jaw youths wanting to get involved with any of the new online programming or be a part of the Joe’s Place Discord server are encouraged to message Joe’s Place Youth Centre on either Facebook or Instagram for an invite.
“We’re all in this together,” said Dueck. “There’s lots of funny chats going on, and a meme channel on the server where people are posting funny memes constantly, and it really keeps everyone’s spirits up.”
