YORKTON – Feb. 26, St. Alphonsus School in Yorkton held a unique Pink Shirt Day event, aimed at promoting kindness and raising awareness about bullying.
The highlight of the event was participants building snowmen and snow angels, all adorned in pink shirts.
"The idea was to have students come out and really cultivate that community of kindness," said Jamie De Vos, Mental Health Capacity Building Coordinator at St. Alphonsus School, on the motivation behind the event.
"We encouraged them to come out and build snowmen or snow angels and spray paint a pink shirt on them just to kind of promote that," added De Vos.
The event also saw participation from dignitaries, including representatives from the City of Yorkton, Fire Protective Services and the RCMP.
De Vos emphasized the importance of such events under the Mental Health Capacity Building Program.
"Under the mental health capacity building program we try to do one bigger event every year," said De Vos.
"We chose this one because a lot of students identified some anxiety feelings and paired up with that was bullying. We know Pink Shirt Day is about bullying and we want to promote that every day but today is just a really great day to be able to do that," said De Vos.
De Vos said the inspiration for the event came from a similar initiative in Ontario, where sculptures were used. However, given Saskatchewan's snowy February, St. Alphonsus School opted for snowmen and snow angels.
"Living in Saskatchewan in February we have snow so we just decided let's do the snowmen and snow angels," said De Vos.
The entire school participated in the event and De Vos expressed hope that the program would expand to other schools under the Mental Health Capacity Building Program.
