FreshWater is sharing six of the winning poems and essays written by local students for The Maltz Museum’s 2025 Stop the Hate Youth Speak Out and Youth Sing Out essay and poetry contest. 

Students created essays, poems, and songs reflecting on a quote from artist Marc Chagall: “Despite all the troubles of our world, in my heart I have never given up on the love in which I was brought up…In life, just as on the artist's palette, there is but one single colour that gives meaning to life and art–the colour of love."