past INITIATIVES
Black Youth Summer Marketplace and Lime July 2026
The Black Youth Summer Marketplace brought together the community to celebrate Black youth entrepreneurship, creativity, and culture. The event featured 25+ Black youth vendors showcasing unique products and welcomed 125+ attendees who came to shop, connect, and support local entrepreneurs. With a vibrant and welcoming atmosphere, the marketplace fostered meaningful community connections while highlighting the talent, innovation, and creativity of Black youth-owned businesses.
FIND YOUR WAY BACK,
A new LOCAL & INTERNATIONAL
SERVICE LEARNING INITIATIVE
Find Your Way Back is an empowering and transformative program that explores Caribbean and African cultures through an immersive curriculum, civic engagement, and service learning in an effort to reconnect participants with their Caribbean and African heritage. This initiative aims to provide participants with a deep understanding of their cultural heritage, enhance levels of civic engagement, and foster leadership skills through an immersive culturally focused curriculum and hands-on experiences. The program culminates in an optional service-learning opportunity to support a literacy and leadership camp in Jamaica.
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Since the inception of The Power to Be, our mission has been to empower and support youth. With the growing number of African diasporic communities, Find Your Way Back is a PAID opportunity for youth to reconnect to their ethnic roots, and find grounding and safety within their cultural identities. It strengthens the capacity of youth with African and Caribbean ancestry to support their local communities as leaders.
The program is open to students ages 18-25 who will make up the PTBI facilitator cohort, engaging in a series of workshops centered on diasporic knowledge, anti-racism and equity, programming for youth, and civic engagement. The program began in August 2024 with a leadership and learning retreat, followed by monthly meetings and checkpoints throughout the year (Sept 2024 - June 2025), ending with a volunteer option with PTBI’s literacy and leadership camp in Jamaica (August 2025).
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AKEELAH'S ROOM & ENGAGING GIRLS
Akeelah's Room was an initiative, run by Black girls for Black girls, providing safer spaces (face-to-face and online) and tools, which encouraged critical thinking and engagement on issues that impact Black girls' diverse lived experiences. Akeelah's Room hosted a series of events, which later included online programs. For details and other youth programs contact Ronaye at programs@thepowertobe.org
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Engaging Girls was PTBI's girls' empowerment initiative, which focused on longer empowerment-focused resources such as, overnight camps, short-term, and year-long workshops that were delivered to creatively support the education, development, and well-being of girls.
funded by:
Black culture Pop Culture (bcpc) Conference (winter 2024)
Funded by the Department of Canadian Heritage: The Multiculturalism and Anti-Racism Program
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Black Culture Pop Culture (BCPC) Conference is a youth-led community initiative that explored media-based, cultural and intersectional influences that form the social and digital world in which Black youth absorb and operate within.
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Led by a strong team of local youth facilitators, the attendees of the conference examined contemporary popular culture through the guidance of our facilitating team. The youth selected workshops 'post-secondary' style, in which they explored themes such as Afro-Futurism, Blackness in film & media, Blackness on social media, and Blackness in gaming.
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In addition to the workshops, the conference included 'swag' bags of Black self-care products such as bonnets, durags, hair oil, deodorants, lip balms, and snacks.
The conference also featured two highlight tables, We Buy Black, which included Black-owned products across North America; and Books & Beats, which included five different playlists and a variety of novels written by Black authors.
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Conference Schedule
Workshop Descriptions
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AnTI-RacIsm Inclusion & Diversity Education Program
(AIDE) & YOUTH EDUCATING YOUTH PROJECT (YEYP)
Anti-racism Inclusive Diversity Education (AIDE) is a project which supports the education of youth on issues of inclusion and diversity. Participants are engaged in conversations about anti-racism, inclusion, and diversity.
The project employs and trains youths to develop a series of workshops, programs, and activities to support the goal of reducing the impact of racism in their schools and communities and by extension Canada while advancing broader cultural understanding and appreciation for diversity.
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The AIDE team has worked on creating materials for anti-racism, diversity, and inclusion education for children and youth. We hosted a youth conference in Feb 2024!
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YEYP programs — from Protect Your Crown to The Yute Room Podcast and YEYP through Film with TIFF — empower youth to explore culture, identity, and wellness through creative expression and discussion. These experiences cultivate leadership, media literacy, and a deeper understanding of representation.
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Key Highlights:
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Protect Your Crown: 4-week empowerment program for Black girls in Durham Region
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The Yute Room Podcast: 11 episodes featuring youth and mental health experts
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YEYP through Film: partnership with TIFF for screenings and dialogue on inclusion
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Find Your Way Back: retreat-based leadership and civic engagement training
Yute Room Podcast
Conversations with Black Youth from the GTA
funded by:
engaging girls:
Safe Return to Class Program (Summer 2021)
Funded by the Ministry of Education's Safe Return to School Grant
This program, funded by the government of Ontario, helped to mitigate potential learning gaps caused by COVID-19 by supporting the learning, health, and well-being of Black girls entering grades 8, 9, and 10. Participants took part in series of activities starting with online group engagement from July 21st to 30th 2021. The program ended with a 4-night overnight camp in Blue Mountain, Ontario.
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Retreat activities include: daily tutoring and learning support, mindfulness and self-development workshops, physical activities, peer-peer socialization, and mentoring - all tailored to the specific and unique needs of Black girls.
BREAKING THE CYCLE AND EMPOWERING GIRLS
Engaging Girls: Empowerment, Leadership, Development & Action (EGELDA)
The Engaging Girls: Empowerment, Leadership, Development, and Action (EGELDA) program addressed the challenges that participants face in developing their social identity and maintaining positive healthy relationships with their peers. It also helped to encourage gender equity and development through youth civic engagement on social issues that are youth-driven and led.
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EGELDA was a yearlong mentorship and leadership program that focuses on empowerment for girls of color through critical engagement with information communication technology (ICT), social media and civic engagement. Our participant group was girls from marginalized groups between the ages of 14-18 in the Pickering/Ajax.
youth programs
infrastructure builds
Community Builds
The Power to Be International continues to work toward its goal through investing in the future of youth with our community build program. PTBI has completed four community builds to date, in an effort to alleviate the lack of adequate space or facilities, which support the education and development of youth.
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Our community builds are paired with other community leadership development programs to increase sustainability and promote civic engagement of community youth.
Completed Projects
Negril All Age School (2012): Two-room classroom extension
Partner: Centennial College
Additional funding provided by Elementary Teachers of Toronto
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Mt. Airy All Age School (2013): Two-room classroom extension
Partner: Centennial College
Additional funding provided by Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario
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Risen Messiah Early Childhood Institute (2014): ECE Playground
Partner: Centennial College
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Prickly Pole Primary School (2015): Two Site Playground
Partner: S.M.I.L.E. (Single Mothers Inspiring Leadership in Education)
Working Together Creating Change
Through the support of program partners and funders such as Centennial College, Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario, The Elementary Teachers of Toronto, and The Rotary Club of Negril, The Power to Be International is able to work with members of the Westmoreland community to assist in meeting education development goals.
INTERESTED IN BEING INVOLVED IN A COMMUNITY BUILD?
We are actively seeking new opportunities to engage in community, youth focused infrastructure development. Email us if you have any questions, ideas, or interest in collaborating on a project at info@thepowertobe.org
lumIfi for literacy: Digital Reading Improvement Program
The Lumifi for Literacy - Digital Reading Engagement Program (D-REP) is a 10 week intensive and incentive-based reading program that provides support for struggling and unmotivated high school students to develop basic decoding, fluency, and comprehension skills. It is a one-on-one program in which a teacher works closely with a student for 45 minutes while the student engages in reading and writing activities. This program is the result of a unique social innovation partnership between The Power to Be International, Enactus-LUMIFI, University of Toronto, and two high schools, Little London and Rhodes Hall, in Westmoreland, Jamaica.
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The goal of this partnership was to bring together technology, teacher training, and high quality literacy resources to support high school students who are reading three to four levels below their grade level.
