MONTREAL - In a world where winning is everything and kids get yelled at by coaches, a Montrealer has designed a course that reinjects some humanity into play.
Daniel Roy of the Montreal group Equitas rethought the way kids play in his Play it Fair program and five years later the program is taught to over 65,000 kids in Canada and several other countries.
Nia, 7, explained the goals of the program as she played according to its rules in Verdun recently.
"We should all be nice to each other and we should respect everybody and include everybody," she told CTV Montreal.
Roy's goal was to answer the question: "how do you take some conflicts and make sure that there not conflicts anymore?"
Heidi Wagner, a coordinator at the Dawson Community Centre, has seen the difference since the program began in Verdun.
"What we saw is there was less issues of bullying, there was fewer issues of kids not feeling included in the group," she says. "We actually saw kids changing their behaviour and asking, 'Is that right? Is that fair for that person?'"
Roy is thrilled that the program is being embraced all over.
"It's way beyond my expectations," he says.
