Kids star in new Regional Police hate crime awareness campaign

Inclusion and acceptance are two main things the Waterloo Regional Police Service are looking to promote.

It’s all part of their new hate crime awareness campaign, which highlights a ‘Hate is Learned’ theme.

The video for the campaign features 28 children from the region speaking about the benefits of being inclusive of others regardless of their race, culture, religion, sexual orientation, gender or ability.

Alana Russell with Regional Police says the idea for the campaign formed organically by observing children in the region.

“They were playing together quite nicely despite being of different backgrounds and it really shows that kids look at each other for the value they bring to their friendships, and don’t look at all these other types of things that become barriers later on in life,” she says.

Russell says the goal of the campaign is to encourage people to report any incidents of hate crimes because WRPS take them very seriously.

Russell says she hopes the video changes people’s perspective as to how they’ve learned to look at other groups and can see how these kid all get along.

She adds the video can be seen in some local movie theaters, bus shelters and will be readily available through social media.

You can check it out here.