It's About Time is the eMag of CASSA's project Say No To Hate (SNTH). SNTH is a project to empower the South Asian community and others to fight hate crime. The project is run by Lalita Krishna and Ahmad Saidullah.

CASSA is pleased to announce that its award winning SNTH hate crime video also called It's About Time and training tools are now available. We will be producing more tools soon.

This web magazine is another way for CASSA to hear from you. We hope you will stay involved and contribute to this web magazine.

Say No To Hate: Remember Reena Virk

Remember Reena Virk? It's not easy to forget her brutal death at the hands of other teenagers. We know the system failed her.

But Reena Virk's death is not just a blip. These acts against South Asians have a long history. As far back as a hundred years ago when South Asians first arrived in Canada. Some of us have experienced hate activity in schools, on the streets, in the workplace, and where we live. And then there's 9/11 and what followed.

Council of Agencies Serving South Asians (CASSA), an umbrella organization in Toronto, sponsored Say No To Hate (SNTH) two years ago. It was funded by Ontario Trillium Foundation and the National Centre for Crime Prevention. SNTH is a project to empower the South Asian community in the GTA on the issue of hate crime through training and tools. The project is led by two executors: Lalita Krishna and Ahmad Saidullah.

And the response has been great. At last year's Masala Mehndi Masti, CASSA organized a project launch. There was a freestyle rap competition and a screening of "It's About Time," a video on hate crime and South Asian youth, with a theme song by LAL. CASSA also unveiled the SNTH project website on hate (http://cassasnth.tripod.com) on the same day.

This year, CASSA used the SNTH website and video resources in developing a hate crime Train the Trainer program targeted at youth. It has delivered these hate-crime trainings in Montreal and Alberta as well and will go to BC later this year.

CASSA is doing more. It will be training community agencies in Toronto to help them develop a better response to serving hate-crime victims. And it's developing more resources.

Stay tuned, stay involved.