THUNDER BAY - It may not have been question period on Parliament Hill, but one Northern Ontario MP had to answer challenging questions from an eager and interested audience.
Minister of the Status of Women, Patty Hajdu, met with students at Holy Cross School Monday to discuss the rights of women and girls around the world and right here in Canada.
“I think it’s so important to have this conversation from an early age,” Hajdu said. “I think that when we are talking about trying to change the way society perceives a problem or an opportunity, we need to start with young minds.”
Carol Pascuzzo, a teacher librarian at Holy Cross School, said Hajdu’s visit fit well with the topics grade four and five students are studying.
“On International Day of the Girl, we started exploring the topic of girl’s rights around the world and looking a little bit at girl’s rights in Canada as well,” she said.
Pascuzzo added that the topic has been difficult for the students to understand, partly because not all children at that age are exposed to inequality.
“They are so used to their reality that they didn’t understand that girls around the world don’t have the same rights as them or even that some girls in Canada don’t have the same rights,” Pascuzzo said.
“There was a bit of shock. It took them a while to understand and they did some research on it and they began to understand what impacted the lives of these girls.”
The students decided that they wanted to take action and they are planning a social justice fundraising project in support of the not-for-profit organization, Girls Helping Girls.
“Our kids are really enthusiastic learners,” Pascuzzo said. “They have been enthusiastic about this project from the beginning.”
Grade four students, Jack Van Den Oetealaar and Kate Luu, said learning about the inequality faced by women around the world and in Canada was really surprising.
“It makes me feel mad,” Luu said. “Girls and boys should be treated equally and girls should have the right to go to school in their countries.”
“It makes me feel sad and mad at the same time,” Van Den Oetealaar added. “I never thought that until we learned about it. I want to go there and try to help them.”
The students had not shortage of questions for Hajdu, questioning her on her job as minister, speaking at the United Nations, and why women still face inequality.
“Some of the depth of the question, when we get into the whys, that’s when it gets more challenging, because it’s not a pleasant history, in terms of not just our country, but women’s rights generally,” Hajdu said.
“It’s always a bit of a challenge to talk about the whys of any problem in an age specific way. But these students were amazing and super engaged and they had fantastic questions.”
Hajdu added that she could see on the student’s faces that what she was saying was really registering with them and talking about a problem is the first step toward change.
“The more that we can talk about this, the better chance we have to make some change,” she said. “We can’t change what we don’t see.”
