[Resilience is the ability to survive, adapt and thrive in the face of any challenge.]
It's not going to be easy,
in fact, it's going to be hard.
You might want to stop, give up, or walk away.
And if you do, you're always going to wonder.. what if?
Slow down, breath in confidence, and fight.
Fight with everything you got.
No matter what's thrown at you,
push until you've given it your all.
One extra push, one extra punch, that's all it takes.
From the very first time I wrapped my hands
and put on the gloves
I just literally fell in love with the sport of boxing.
I didn't feel comfortable really telling my coaches like
hey I have a back problem
so I tried to suck it up I guess, as much as I could.
That lead to the disk in my back blowing up.
In those moments before I had surgery
I finally got to meet Dr. Valiante
and I made a deal with him that if he fixed me
I would quit my job and I would devote my whole life
to the sport of boxing and using it as a tool
to help other people heal.
I have kept that promise, and since 2010
I've been running with my husband
a not-for-profit charity MJKO.
A boxing based youth charity located in South Parkdale.
What we do is we actually use sport to
help create social change.
The kids that come to MJKO,
on the surface they look like happy kids
but then you realize they've lost a parent,
they're dealing with you know,
a community filled with mental health issues,
they're struggling in school,
english is not their fist language.
Boxing teaches us to perceiver,
to get up and push through the hard times
and I think that's something we need to do more of.
At MJKO I am one of the coaches.
So ya, I used to fight a lot when I was younger and
that's how I can kind of like also relate
to a lot of the kids at our organization.
Youth organizations are a big need for
communities like Parkdale.
For me when I lived in community housing
I was exposed to like, I saw a lot of violent things happening,
there was a lot of gang and criminal activities
that were happening in the neighbourhoods.
Because of MJKO, rather than being out in the streets
getting involved with things that they shouldn't
be getting involved in.
The kids in the Parkdale community have somewhere
to call a second home.
They have somewhere to go where
they have people who care about them
and are motivating them and are rooting for them.
So that kind of is already itself a win for the community.
Boxing is like the one thing
that they look forward to everyday.
Boxing is not about violence. It's about self-regulation,
it's about self-control,
and it's about being a better person.
From there they get confident around their peers
and then they get confident out on the street outside of the organization.
Some kids naturally like competition
and why not use that for good?
My dream is to be a professional boxer.
It's a challenge to me because
It's like an exercise that's like kind of non-stop every week.
If MJKO didn't exist, my life would kind of be like errr.
If you have a bad day, you have someone to
come and be nice and help you feel better.
Constantly go there and practice, work hard.
It's good to learn from your mistakes because mistakes are powerful.
When I was growing up,
if I had an organization in my life
like MJKO that is a second home to me.
I think it would have been amazing for a lot of people
I grew up with as well. It's life changing.
A lot of the kids that I grew up with,
some of them are dead, some of them are in jail
and if they had that in their life
they probably would be living a different life right now.
If they had somewhere to go
rather than be out on the streets
it would have been a lot different.
We want to light a spark.
We want the kids to believe that
anything they want, they can accomplish.
Every single kid that I see walks in with so much potential
like I don't see all the things that other people see.
So when parents tell me
they've seen such a change in their kid,
for me I've always seen
like I've always saw that potential and that ability.
For me it's just providing a nurturing environment
that they can thrive
and I think that's all the kids in South Parkdale need
is a place to thrive.
Being able to just show kids that
yeah I do care about you, it's more than just
you coming and spending an hour and a half with us.
You're my family too.
Just being able to put a smile
on a kid face is what drives me.
It's kind of like a big family
where everyone gets together and gets along.
Resilience is grounded in passion and in joy.
Without finding your love,
what you're meant to do in this earth,
it's very hard to be resilient.
The sport of boxing has taught me so much
about the ability to face fear.
Life is scary, life is hard and it's about just facing it.
One fight, one step, one challenge at a time.
Im just one of like thousands of people in Toronto
that are doing amazing work
to make the lives of children and the citizens better.
[To make Toronto more Resilient, we want to know how are Torontonians building Resilience in their communities every day?]
[This is one story, what's yours?]
[Share your #resilientstory at www.resilienttoronto.ca]
[Toronto logo and Resilient Toronto logo]
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