THUNDER BAY – Thunder Bay Multicultural Association – Immigrant Social Network and the Breaking Ice Lounge (Youth Community Connection program) are hosting the Breaking Ice Lounge 1st Youth Leadership Conference on Wednesday August 22nd from noon until 4:30PM.
The event will be held at the Thunder Bay Multicultural Association at 17 Court St North.
This forum continues along the path of the Finding Our Way project, which was created as a way to support the transition of newcomer youth into Canadian culture.
Whether they are children of conventional refugees, skilled immigrant class, or family class permanent residents, immigrant youth face many challenges and have to adjust to the many new cultural issues.
With Thunder Bay as their new home they will be joining all the other youth of the community as our future leaders.
The focus of the conference is to bring together future leaders, mentoring and enriching our youth in a hands-on atmosphere while preparing them for a lifetime of leadership.
The forum presenters are the Regional Multicultural Youth Council, launching their new campaign of “Leaders of Tomorrow, Today”, a fitting theme for a youth leadership conference.
The RMYC as peer-to-peer youth leaders are great role models to engage other youth.
Youth leadership is part of the youth development process, and supports the young person in developing the ability to analyze his or her own strengths and weaknesses, set personal and vocational goals, have self-esteem, confidence, motivation, and abilities to carry them out (including the ability to establish support networks in order to fully participate in community life and effect positive social change) and the ability to guide or direct others on a course of action. This helps to influence the opinions and behaviors of others, and serves as a role models.
This leadership training presentation (developed over the summer) is the first of many for the RMYC in a series plan for the new school year.
Community Arts & Heritage Education Project (CAHEP) will also be doing activities with the kids at the conferences, which will then be displayed at the Superior Youth Fest 2012 at the marina.