One of the biggest driving forces of our society are role models. Role models act as support beans that hold society up. They offer examples of people who overcame the odds. Someone showed resilience as they overcame adversity. Neymar is a common role model. A professional soccer player who was born in the poorest part of Brazil, the Favelas overcame adversity and became one of the best soccer players of all time. Along with many others, Neymar stands as an example of a Story of Hope. My classmate, Benjamin Dinh’s blog post “What is a Story of Hope?” does a great job providing a definition of what a Story of Hope is. Feel free to look over it to help wrap your head around this most recent assignment.

My focus for this project was the community involvement that comes hand in hand with a Story of Hope. I analyzed several different case studies that all had a common theme that I explored : The stories of hope offered by individuals and their communities offer the opportunity to harbour valuable lessons and, serve as role models, inspiration, and motivation for other people facing adversity.

This year my class got the opportunity to go on our first proper field study in over 3 years. My class took a trip to the southern United States where they explored museums, artifacts, and historical monuments all tying into a larger theme of Stories of Hope. Due to schedule conflicts, I decided to remain home this year. This caused my project to be slightly different than the rest of my class. Not attending the field school, allowed the scope of my project to be worldwide. I could analyze any Story of Hope I wanted to and my guidelines became the 20th century.

I decided to focus my efforts on the case study of the Humboldt Broncos. A Junior A Hockey Team that was tragically killed in a motor vehicle accident in 2018. There were 16 people killed and 13 injured, including players, coaching staff, and more. I focused my case study on the resilience shown by the Humboldt community in the aftermath of the accident. Families, and loved once had the opportunity to grieve as a collective, allowing for connections to be made and for every voice to feel heard. I explore this in my video and how adversity can actually bring people together where lifelong connections are made.

My video also explores what my community means to me. I am extremely lucky to live in such a healthy and loving community where each individual is respected the same and is able to get out of it, exactly what they put into it. My community harbours learning, activity, social events and more allowing for all of us to come together and celebrate what brings us together. This has shaped my identity and who I am today to an extent that 10 years ago I could never even imagine. My Parkgate community, my soccer community, and my Seycove community all have played different, but equally crucial roles throughout my life which I draw on throughout my video. I use the example of myself to showcase the power community has over its habitants.

All in all, I can draw that stories of individuals and communities that have faced tragedy and overcome adversity offer the opportunity to harbor valuable lessons and, serve as role models, inspiration, and motivation for other people facing adversity.