High school youth from various secondary schools in Saskatoon have been proudly organizing and hosting this daylong conference for over a decade with the support of our youth program facilitators.
The conference is designed to provide immigrant/refugee, Indigenous and mainstream Canadian youth with an opportunity to address the issues they face, through a dialogue with influential local decision-makers. Throughout the day, students join different breakout groups to engage with community leaders such as the Mayor of Saskatoon or senior managers of various local school boards. The discussions revolve around topics they have chosen, such as addictions, community concerns, social justice, social media, employment and education. The community leaders then form a panel and the entire assembly of youth have the opportunity to ask them challenging questions.
Our objective is to have decision makers, by meeting with Saskatchewan’s youth, acknowledge our youth’s ideas, opinions, and concerns and to have their thinking influence future policy development.
Last year’s summit was the 11th edition and was organized in collaboration with the Students Commission of Canada and several community partners.