We are very excited to announce that youth Coach Jimmy Zhang and Executive Board Member Egerton Marcus will be taking part in the Pan American Games Torch Relay. 

Please come out and support both of these Champions.

Jimmy Zhang, Monday, July 6 at 11am
Start point is 650 Dundas St East. Toronto
End point 761 Dundas St East. Toronto
Torch Bearer #  019

A huge thank you to the Toronto Foundation and their Donor who made this once in a life time opportunity possible for Jimmy.  

Egerton Marcus Tuesday, July 7, 2015 at 1:30pm
Start point is 2510 Bloor St W
Torch Bearer #  040

To learn more about the torch relay visit:http://www.toronto2015.org/torch-relay

To learn more about the Toronto 2015 Pan Am & Parapan American Games visit http://www.toronto2015.org/

When tweeting don't forget to add @TO2015Torch

Our youth lead Girl's Only event was a great success.  Thank you, Teen ParticipACTION and the Harbourfront Community Centre for your funding support. We had 38 students and 10 coaches come out and dare to try.  This was the first time we had decided to have a multi-sport setting, teaching beginner boxing and Olympic Weightlifting.

With the help of Ontario Weightlifting, we arranged for a very special guest, Ontario Weightlifter Amanda Galloway. Amanda is a 2014 Canadian Gold medalist, 2-time Ontario Champion and has now qualified to represent Canada at the Pan American Games this July. 

Amanda had a great talk encouraging all ladies to keep trying different sports until they found one they truly love.  That’s what she did.

The following is a short overview of the "My Turn To Coach" program where MJKO youth leader, Anna Zhang, got a chance to run this girls only event as the Head Coach.

On April 25th, 2015, I helped organized the Girls Only Boxing “Try It” event with my MJKO family. It was definitely a great opportunity for me to use the skills and knowledge that I have gained from participating in the MJKO programs and the Playing for Keeps Volunteer Ambassador training. At first, I was very nervous in taking the role as Head Coach. Speaking in front of so many people is difficult for me but after getting started, it wasn’t all that bad.

I had a great time teaching others the things that I had learned from being in the MJKO program and spreading the knowledge and skills to others in the community. I learned that taking on the leadership role is very important and challenging at times, but someone has to be the leader in order to guide others.
Also, teamwork is very important, because organizing such a big event, requires lots of help and support. The MJKO family was there for me every step of the way.

I am very thankful to be part of the MJKO program. It has provided me with so many skills and knowledge of how to be a better coach and mentor to the youth in my community.

To view all the pictures from the event visit: https: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.999672870073178.1073741962.187566687950471&type=3

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This program builds upon the foundation set in the “My Turn to Coach” program allowing students to take on the role as head coach. This program provides further training for MJKO participants to be successful in today’s competitive job market. Each youth leader accepted into Take the Lead will receive leadership training, CPR training, and boxing coaching certification. The goal is for each trainee to successfully host one fun and high quality Neighborhood Games boxing event in their community.

Take the Lead with 10 Year old Youth Coach Kiara

The session I conducted was called “Basket with a Punch”.  The theme of the class was to combine boxing with basketball.  I had a lot of fun conducting the class.  At first I was nervous, but thanks to Michelle who was always there to guide me, I got my confidence and conducted the class with a lot of energy and fun.

We started off introducing ourselves by tossing the basketball to each other. Then we played a cool math game that uses circuit based drills and multiplication.  Michelle helped me with this.  It was great warm up. After that, we played a game called ‘Cat and Mouse ‘ which is a tag game.  Everyone had lots of fun running from the cat. Next, we moved on to shadow boxing. After all the new people learned the basic punches I split everyone in to 5 groups.  Each group was doing a different activity.  We conducted activities like knowledge on basketball, focus pad drills and the most fun of them all,  was the skipping which was my personal favourite.

After the stations it was time to move on to relay races between two teams.  This was a lot of fun, and high energy.  It was a great exercise too.The class ended with a cool downs.  This helped us relax.  While we were doing the cool downs, my father arranged the table with fruit kebabs which my brother Calvin and I had prepared for all the whole team.

Overall, it was a amazing experience for me as I got a chance to lead a group of people who were all much older than me. A big Thank You to Miranda, Michelle and Ibrahim for giving me this chance!

To watch Kiara in action click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mFzYlpEQvM

Our 14 Division Police Officers out to support Kiara. 

HUGE NEWS! MJKO has just scored our first TFC game and we need your help selling 50/50 tickets! Thanks to our committed volunteers, MJKO has been selected to take part in this huge initiative that will benefit us and the communities we serve. We are looking for at least 30 people that can help us on Saturday August 8th, 2015 at around 2:00pm until 5:00pm approximately. Come alone or get your friends involved and create a mini team of 5 people and let's show the MLSE just how talented we are! All proceeds raised from these endeavours support FREE programming for youth in our community. It's a short amount of time to raise a substantial amount of money for a worthy cause. If you can help us out-please email randy.phipps@mjko.ca and join us for this incredible event!

MJKO IS A VOLUNTEER-RUN ORGANZATION

Together we are getting kids moving, dreaming the big dream and understanding the value of volunteerism.  To learn more about volunteer opportunities with Mentoring Juniors Kids Organization (MJKO) or to donate please visit http://www.mjko.ca