Toronto youth organized the one-day event to talk about sex ed, social justice and making change

Tessa Hill became an activist when she was 13.

Her efforts helped change government policy and earned her a nomination for Torontonian of the Year.

Now she’s 17 and just helped organize an activism forum called Mic Drop so that other kids can learn how to make change happen.

“It's been a very wild ride working on this event and witnessing its journey from idea to reality,” Hill told a room of more than 100 Toronto students at The 519 community centre on Jan. 11.

Mic Drop is their response to the Ontario government cancelling both the updated sex-ed curriculum and plans to teach more about First Nations.

“We [wanted] to create something in response to something being taken away from us,” Hill told CBC Kids News.

Their goal was for students to meet each other, discuss social justice and learn activism skills.

Hill knows firsthand how useful those skills are.

This photo of Tessa Hill, left, and Lia Valente was taken in 2015 when they started a petition that helped change Ontario’s sex-ed curriculum. (Joshua Ostroff/CBC)

In Grade 8, Hill and her friend Lia Valente started a petition asking for consent to be taught in the classroom.

The petition got 40,000 signatures.

They met with Premier Kathleen Wynne, who agreed with the girls. In 2015, Hill and Valente appeared alongside Wynne when she announced the modernized sex-ed curriculum would add consent as well as online safety and LGBTQ information.

But those changes were removed at the beginning of this school year when the new provincial government ordered schools to use the old sex-ed curriculum from 1998.

Hill and other student activists have been fighting to bring them back ever since.

Mic Drop is part of that effort.

It offered workshops on sex ed and human rights activism, supporting Indigenous and LGBTQ people and other social issues.

Youth organizers work on signs and posters for Mic Drop. (The 519)

Azra Kamenov is one of the students who attended Mic Drop.

“It was the most mind-blowing concept that other youth like myself could organize something so big to spread education,” says Kamenov.

“I think kids have more impact than kids themselves realize and adults realize.”

Hill says she wants Mic Drop participants to “take the ideas and skills back to their own communities and continue these conversations both in physical spaces and on social media.”

She says it’s “really, really important” for younger kids to speak out, just like she did.

“When you care ... and you pull in teachers and parents and friends, people will listen,” Hill says.

“And if they don't, just have to keep fighting and keep speaking.”