Karenveer Pannu: So next we'll be moving on to our presentations. So today we'll be meeting with 3 leaders from our cohort to Cdos communities.
Karenveer Pannu: We have Jodi from officer Tony Hale, from Prince Edward County, and queries from Regina and I'll. Let each of them introduce themselves more fully in their presentations.
Karenveer Pannu: and after these presentations we'll move to a. Q. And a session.
Karenveer Pannu: If you have any questions, feel free to share them in the chat, and we can address them, and you can ask the questions actually directly after the presentations.
Karenveer Pannu: So let's start with Jodi.
Jodie Konior: Wonderful thanks, Karenveer! Hi! Everyone! My name is Jodie Connor. I am the project lead for the communities building these features. Initiative here in Oxford County
Jodie Konior: for those of you who don't know where Oxford County is. It's located in Southwestern Ontario about an hour. Ish down the 401 from the Gta.
Jodie Konior: and we are located on the traditional territories of the initial. They and Mrs. Sagas of the credit and neutral
Jodie Konior: peoples within our community, and also we have a number of other first nations nearby. We have the the 6 Nations and Caledonia that's nearby. We have Chicago of the Thames, which is another TV Wi-fi community. That's right close by we're right in the middle of a a bunch of very very full and amazing indigenous communities, and we're happy to be able to to kind of support a variety of of folks and of diverse folks within our community.
Jodie Konior: You can go to the next slide can be
Jodie Konior: so. Oxford County is located in Ontario. As I mentioned, we have a 2 tier municipal government system, so we have 8 municipalities that all together make up Oxford County.
Jodie Konior: We have a total population of about 121,000 people, of which 64% of the population live within Woodstock, Ingersol and Tilsonburg, which are those 3 very small areas that you see on the map. So 64% of our population lives in about 10% of our landmass. So really I struggle with a lot of of engaging the rural youth and making sure that those that those pieces are are considered, because
Jodie Konior: be because also a big part of being a rural community, we have very, very poor public transportation, and so we have to think about those kinds of things when we're engaging mute
Jodie Konior: so locally what we have done for our community building use features, initiative is we created. We started off with creating a leadership table when we were approached to join the the By F initiative.
Jodie Konior: So our leadership Table. It consist of representatives from 15 local, you serving organizations, and for local youth as well, who sit on both our leadership table and our Youth Council, which i'll talk about our Youth Council in just a moment.
Jodie Konior: The leadership table is organizations from multiple sectors. So we have our local united way. We have school boards, we have the local college. We have employment services, mental health services.
Jodie Konior: disability services, a really wide variety of organizations who are represented around our table as well as local government and the role of the leadership table is really to support the implementation of the projects.
Jodie Konior: priority areas and resources that the Youth Council has proposed that we we move forward with. So it's really about providing that scaffolding and support to building up to the youth Council ideas, and also providing guidance around legislative and liability, consideration.
Jodie Konior: and we have a youth council as well. That is, consist of 20 local youth.
Jodie Konior: So all of the local youth either live or work in Oxford County. Currently, all of the local youth live in Oxford County. They come from a a bunch of different diverse backgrounds, life, experiences, and perspective, current membership. We currently have numbers from 6 of the 8 municipalities within Oxford County, which is something that was really important to us.
Jodie Konior: because we heard a lot from you when we first started, that a lot of different initiatives, whether it's about youth or about any other complex social issue, focus their resources very heavily in those kind of 3 municipalities that we talked about, and especially Woodstock, which is the biggest one.
Jodie Konior: And so we really wanted to do our best to try to make sure that our makeup of our youth council percentage wise, was aligned with the percentage of the population of each of those 8 municipalities. So, for example in Zora, Zora makes up about
Jodie Konior: 5 of the of the population of all of Oxford County, and so we would want that to be about 5 of our youth Council would also be from that area. So we've really tried to make sure that that's something that that we're doing to ensure that we do have that that rural perspective.
Jodie Konior: Additionally, the the role of the Youth Council is in selecting those priority areas and guiding, guiding the creation and implementation of Cb. Of the Cdf effort. So it's really about making sure that you are the ones that are are leading this initiative, and adults are supporting and and building up their ideas as much as possible. And so, while we do have these 2 separate entities, we do make sure that we have very frequent meetings where we all work together to to build up our initiative and and work on the different things
Jodie Konior: together, and so you can go to the next slide.
Jodie Konior: So some of the challenges that we faced within Oxford County that I wanted to highlight Today we have 2 that I would like to highlight. One is around barriers to use participation. So what we have found in talking to to different local use out in the community is that there are a number of barriers to be able to participate in these kinds of things.
Jodie Konior: especially in a rural community. So we really try to talk to every youth who is even a remotely interested and and being involved, and they they might mention yeah, like I would. I'd love to join in support. But I can't, because I can't come to meetings because I can't. I? I can't go
Jodie Konior: at their transportation life. I can't attend virtual meetings because I don't have access to high speed. Internet I can attend meetings because I need to. I I
Jodie Konior: I need food, I I can't, I can't miss out on a meal at home, or those kinds of things. I can't attend meetings virtually, because I don't have a computer, you know, like different things like that. And what we've really done is we
Jodie Konior: try to anticipate use needs as much as possible prior to engaging with them, and come up with a solution to those things on an individual basis. And so, whenever we do, have you to come to us and identify different barriers, say i'd love to participate. But I can't, because, Xyz, we really try to address those barriers on an individual basis.
Jodie Konior: Additionally, we also hear a big barrier to you. Participating is just the idea of like
Jodie Konior: this big committee of youth, and they kind of it's often seen as something that's very, very rigid, very stick, very formal, and that's not what we do. We we really make sure that we make our environment and our format safe and make it fun. We want it. We we recognize it that you don't want to sit in a meeting that is similar to say, a city council meeting, or those kinds of things. I don't want to sit through the City Council meeting.
Jodie Konior: Pardon me, sorry
Jodie Konior: i'm recovering from an illness, so I might have to pause once in a while, but really emphasize that we we make meetings fun we make. We we make sure our meetings are safe through a variety of ways. So those are things that are really important to to ensure while we're addressing those barriers
Jodie Konior: and board, the reality is is. These kinds of initiatives are often pretty slow moving, because there's so many aspects, and there's so much process behind it which is astronomically important. So
Jodie Konior: what we really do to address that and try to stop people from being board, and then just engaging from our our initiative, is meeting with our youth volunteers and our youth interns on a regular basis. Talk about what are your winning goals! What are your growth goals? What are the things that you want to be a little bit more involved. What are your goals for your future? Because then what we can do is we can support them with things within our initiative that they might be interested in. So we really do that same thing on an individual basis, and customize our approach to every single use that we work with.
Jodie Konior: And then a second challenge that we've really faced within our community that we've spent a lot of time working on is addressing conscious and subconscious biases between youth and adults, so that you hold against adults, and that adults pulled against you. So we we know that
Jodie Konior: reality is is that we all come into relationships like this with baggage, and then, especially between you and adults, there has been historically over years, and here is tons and tons of barriers to those relationships being built effectively, and adults
Jodie Konior: come back from poor relationships with adults when they were you. And then they kind of see oh, like this! That's how I treat you now, because that's how I was treated when I was a youth. You know those different things. And so it's something that we've really spent a lot of time working on, because we found that this was really impeding the the effectiveness of the collaboration between our youth Council and our leadership case.
Jodie Konior: So we've addressed this through things like training so different. You looking at different youth engagement resources, we held a usable youth, adult partnerships training in collaboration with a really amazing organization called Youth Rex.
Jodie Konior: Last year. Different pieces like that.
Jodie Konior: Additionally, as part of our developmental evaluation, we really focused on incorporating questions around how we are doing related to collaboration. So we make sure that we're checking in on how to how do the groups feel like they're collaborating individually, but also collaborating together. And what does that look like? And then, having open discussion and and normalizing, challenging each other and normalizing, doing reflective practices, and pausing and saying, how can we do better? We might be doing well. But how can we do amazing
Jodie Konior: looking at this looking at those kinds of things to really make sure that that we're addressing these different pieces. And then also looking at different practices that you can implement, so giving experiences that that people that challenge their own mental schemas about the other groups. So, for example, we did a
Jodie Konior: participatory grant making model last last year, and as part of reviewing the application to
Jodie Konior: get the adults around the table to kind of just stop and listen and appreciate the the depth of
Jodie Konior: consideration and reflection and evaluation of these applications that you have. We created a practice that was like, okay adult. You have to sit down and stop and just listen for the first little bit we're we're gonna open the floor. First let's hear the youth perspective on this application, and then the youth would talk, and they would
Jodie Konior: at discuss and and debate each other on these different apple applications that came in. For these Grant talked about strength, talked about different considerations, talked about that, and
Jodie Konior: oftentimes at the end of that adult, the adults, and they were like. I have nothing more to add, because you thought about all of these things, but they said, going into the meeting.
Jodie Konior: I They assumed that you wouldn't have thought about a lot of the things that they thought about, and so those are kind of experiences that challenge the adult mental schemas about their perspective of of use.
Jodie Konior: So that that's a a really big challenge that we spent a lot of different. A lot of time focusing on is addressing those conscious and unconscious biases and those barriers between building youth, adult partnership.
Jodie Konior: And so that's what in my breakout group, you'll be hearing a little bit more about. We'll be talking a little bit more about if that's something that you're interested in doing.
Karenveer Pannu: Awesome. Thank you, Jodie. Next will be moving to hail.
Hale Ferguson: Hmm. Hi! Everyone. My name is Phil Ferguson.
Hale Ferguson: I'm. Currently greater than county's collective in Prince Edward County, which is on the traditional end of the Huron Wenda, and it's not a held in Shonai nations. We're about. We're a little peninsula about 2 and a half hours
Hale Ferguson: east from Toronto, and 45 min west of Kingston. So kind of in the middle. There we can go to the next slide.
Hale Ferguson: So, prince of our county. We are a large tourism destination, which is something unique about where we are. We see about 650,000 visitors per year.
Hale Ferguson: Within prince over county we have 10 wards at the the most bustling would be picked in, which is where we are located.
Hale Ferguson: So a population is about 25,704, and as you can see, our largest population is over 55,
Hale Ferguson: so you can see why a lot of the time get there being overlooked within where we are. So less than 15% of our population are people under 30,
Hale Ferguson: and then just a few, a few things about concept accounting for our Median age is
Hale Ferguson: 15 years older than the provincial standard.
Hale Ferguson: So again, a lot of the agent community here, it's being overlooked is being underserved. We can see. Why, that is
Hale Ferguson: why, that's a pattern here. you know, to the next slide.
Hale Ferguson: So work that we're doing. I gathered it from 2021 to now from when we started working with tamarack and communities building new features. so the greater than Counties collective was established in 2,018, and then had a bit of a pause in 2,020 when the pandemic
Hale Ferguson: started, and with the Iraq we were able to start up again in 2,021. So what we did was establish a leadership table, as well as our backbone team, which, in 2,021, was comprised of for local youth certain businesses.
Hale Ferguson: We started establishing connections and figuring out who wanted to be part of our leadership table, and who we wanted on that to to guide us through all of these processes.
Hale Ferguson: We then started to form connections with local youth, which was the most important part of this project.
Hale Ferguson: So by doing that we partnered with our local youth organization.
Hale Ferguson: Just have them on board with us to create connections that they had already established, to kind of bring them over with us on the work that we're doing. We got into the High school, and we developed a gender and sexuality Alliance.
Hale Ferguson: as well as a after school program for youth that are to spare Lgbtq plus a safe space for them to hang out, eat food.
Hale Ferguson: their activities, and we also started a tutoring service out of Pci, which was super helpful.
Hale Ferguson: and then in 2,022 we launched our Youth Truth series, which was a project brought from the greater than county collective
Hale Ferguson: where we had done surveys to see what you. what needs are being fulfilled and what needs are not.
Hale Ferguson: And through that survey we have seen an alarming rate of youth saying that they're lonely. They're depressed. Their anxiety is higher than it's ever been. The pandemic had really isolated them.
Hale Ferguson: They're not seeing people. They don't know how to see people. So the engagement was gone, and they didn't know how to how to bring that back. So we took that up on ourselves
Hale Ferguson: to launch our Youth Truth Series, which was events in our local park in the the quote Unquote downtown district.
Hale Ferguson: and what we did was, we did a pride in the park which was actually our first ever you fled Pride event in prince of the county, and I would say, one of our only actual large scale pride events that was open to the public.
Hale Ferguson: and with that we saw over 200 people in attendance. We were able to
Hale Ferguson: pay local vendors to be there for their time as well as their products. So everything was free to the people who were there, so we had free food, free drinks. There was a raky and South meditation person. They are giving out free.
Hale Ferguson: ricky, sound workshops. We had a a local queer author.
Hale Ferguson: As we little was there giving out writing exercises and writing prompts, we had a local beekeeper who was there doing like bomb and solve activities, and how to create that, as well as a bunch of other local entrepreneurs. So just creating free, accessible events and a few others from our Youtube series was
Hale Ferguson: a concert in the park which featured all youth as well as a movie in the park. Again, the the all of these events were free.
Hale Ferguson: The event was, for your food was free drinks for free, and we gave away sweat at all the events.
Hale Ferguson: So we saw that this created a huge sense of
Hale Ferguson: belonging and commitment, but it also showed us that you are wanting to help. They want to. They They want to lead
Hale Ferguson: throughout the change we had so many
Hale Ferguson: you've come to and say, how can we help? What can we do? And we ended up being able to pay for their time for helping us, which is another huge thing. So another barrier we were able to knock down.
Hale Ferguson: Another thing we did in 2,022. Was, we were granting bursaries for graduating students that helped us along through great event or students that we knew
Hale Ferguson: had a lot of barriers.
Hale Ferguson: What in whatever capacity that may be. So we took them out to lunch at a restaurant called the Royal Hotel, which is a very
Hale Ferguson: fancy fun Place that a lot of these you wouldn't really get the opportunity to possibly go to, and we're able to present them adversary
Hale Ferguson: for a $1,000 at this lunch.
Hale Ferguson: So just still trying to break down barriers, including financial barriers, through all of this.
Hale Ferguson: and then now in 2,023 we're kind of revamping how we're doing things to create it to have a more youth. Led
Hale Ferguson: systems change approach. So we established a steering committee. So, instead of our backbone team, leading everything and making all the decisions and doing all of the event planning. We realized that we needed help, and we also wanted the community to be more involved in this. So we reached out to
Hale Ferguson: a few members of our leadership table at all allies as well as you. We have the same amount of each to make it super equal as well as you fled
Hale Ferguson: to see who wanted to be a part of this change into
Hale Ferguson: guide us forward with what we're doing in our next steps. So we've established that.
Hale Ferguson: and had our first meeting with decision processes which is really cool and looking forward to continuing that.
Hale Ferguson: and again shifted processes to create more youth. Let a bit. So again, having youth on our steering committee instead of the backbone team, deciding everything. Our searing committee and our youth on that are going to be the ones that will lead these events in whatever capacity that may look like.
Hale Ferguson: And again engaging youth and everything that we're doing we did that through 2021 and 2222, but now in 2,023, we're seeing that you know we need to
Hale Ferguson: keep doing that, and do it even though we're doing it well, and to do it in a better capacity.
Hale Ferguson: Yeah. So if we go to the back, thanks so that barriers that we're facing in Prince Edward County.
Hale Ferguson: because we are a rural community because we are located on a pen peninsula. Transportation is a huge.
Hale Ferguson: huge issue.
Hale Ferguson: We have one
Hale Ferguson: transportation bus system that runs
Hale Ferguson: that technically has a schedule. But a lot of youth are saying that the the schedule isn't doesn't work for their needs, or sometimes it's not on time. So a lot of issues for that, especially when
Hale Ferguson: we have meetings. Transportation isn't accessible.
Hale Ferguson: I'm trying to pay for cabs and book Tabs.
Hale Ferguson: But in the summer time that gets really hard, because, I said of our of our growing tourism population in the summer cabs are a lot of the time booked up. So we need to reserve that well in advance.
Hale Ferguson: Housing is a huge issue which I know. It's a huge issue everywhere right now, but just some stats in in Prince Edward County. So we have a 19.5% rent increase since 2,020,
Hale Ferguson: and our vacancy rate is at point 2, which is the fourth lowest vacancy right in Ontario right now.
Hale Ferguson: 16.4 of homes are not occupied by the original owners. We are seeing these being used as short-term rentals.
Hale Ferguson: and this is extremely high. As we are sitting at 16.4% and compared to Toronto and ont and sorry. Toronto and Ontario, which are at a 7.4%.
Hale Ferguson: They can see the right
Hale Ferguson: so more than double that.
Hale Ferguson: So housing is huge everywhere. But we're we're seeing it hit, being hit pretty hard here. Accessible education. So
Hale Ferguson: we have a local
Hale Ferguson: super school in Picton, which is K. To 12. But for for folks that you know the the
Hale Ferguson: the
Hale Ferguson: the root of traditional schooling. Is it possible for them we're seeing not a lot of opportunities for them to kind of shift out of that. So that's something that a area that we want to work on. Food security is obviously huge everywhere right now, and we're seeing that full force in prince that we're counting where people are able to afford their groceries
Hale Ferguson: and similar to what Jody was talking on, is engaging. Youth in meetings has been a huge barrier. So so much what Jody was saying Internet is a huge thing here. Rural Internet is extremely extremely difficult to deal with. It is tropy all of the time.
Hale Ferguson: So whether we're having a hybrid meeting, that is, both virtual as well as in person, we have the issue of
Hale Ferguson: transportation we are unable to get used to. But then Wi-fi and real Internet is an issue as well so kind of breaking down that barrier.
Hale Ferguson: Another issue with meetings again is, is you being bored? They do not want to sit down and run through an agenda, and then have an approval process of the agenda.
Hale Ferguson: and go through all of I mean like again, like Jody, said I don't want to do that, either. It's it's quite boring. So engaging you in our meeting. Something that we did was we did a few. You fled
Hale Ferguson: leadership table meetings, which were some of our biggest turnouts, and they were also fun, and the adults enjoyed it as well, and one of them we did.
Hale Ferguson: and it was like a whole candy and pizza bar, which was the best ever. We were all standing up. We had bright posters around everywhere, like what do you want to see in your community? And we read on the bright posters
Hale Ferguson: eat pizza and candy, and it was a lot of fun. And then another one we did a. I was able to work with some of the youth to create a lock to a list and show them how to do a bar service for mocktails. And at our leadership table we created 3 signature mocktail drinks
Hale Ferguson: that were available
to everyone that participated, which was a lot of funds.
Hale Ferguson: Yeah. So those are barriers to face as well as as as usual ones that we see in real communities which are
Hale Ferguson: our Edi practices, which I will talk about in the breakout room, about engaging to spirit Lgbtq plus youth in rural communities.
Hale Ferguson: Yeah. So it's a bit about greater than in prince over county, and what we're doing.
Karenveer Pannu: Everyone
Claire: Sorry.
Karenveer Pannu: No, not
Claire: Hi. Everyone. My name is Clarice Tech now, and I am a youth engagement coordinator with the Communities building you futures vagina with united Way vagina.
Claire: and we are located on treaty for territory. the homelands of the Cree and Soda, as well as the Nakota Dakota Lakota and the Meiki-speaking people
Claire: so I know we're kind of going off time here, so i'll just kinda quickly go over an overview. So I really wanted to share with you all today the plan on the page that we worked so hard to create in December of 2,022. So just
about 7 months ago.
Claire: this was really an amazing step, because we were able to get all of the youth voices that we had from our focal groups.
Claire: We really we really focused on employment and education as well as access to those resources. and we were able to work with 3 groups of youth from 3 different schools, which was amazing. So we had, like kind of different diverse group of
Claire: a diverse group of voices come into those into those vocal groups.
Claire: and I also want to talk about our amazing leadership table.
Claire: We have 13 members on our leadership table. That consist of the the mayor of our of our city and the chief of police. So they're all kind of at like these really super cool, like high, level places.
Claire: and they have been coming up with different kind of innovative ways with us as well. and it's a little bit difficult, because I feel like Regina, we don't really have too much youth engagement at the moment. Otherwise.
Claire: you know, this initiative has really been helping with that.
Claire: So again, we've been focusing on access to resources and support some safe spaces. So with this plan on the page, I really look at it as like revision board.
Claire: So you know, we go into the need for change, the process of improvements and the possible community goals.
Claire: and with that we have been just working with different partnerships within Regina, to bring in all of those resources and supports, making it accessible as possible, and really creating different type of workshops.
Claire: So you can go to the next slide
Claire: so one way that we were able to really.
Claire: you know, see those barriers and and close the gaps on them was. You know, we were really focusing on adult readiness. and, you know, feeling unprepared like you that were.
Claire: you know, graduating high school going into high school going into university, so they just felt like they weren't. you know, ready for that yet. So we really wanted to focus on that as well.
Claire: Access to support and resources. I feel like they didn't really have this idea of how many great services that we had in Regina that could really help support them with that.
Claire: So service navigation is a big one, as well as cultural and identity and connection and reclamation, because we have a lot of urban, indigenous youth and Regina, who just feel like
Claire: they're not connected to their culture. So it's great to be able to
Claire: great different opportunities for those youth as well, and i'll get into it a little bit in my breakout room about
Claire: how you can engage with indigenous youth, and, you know, Bring them into your your leadership.
Claire: We also talked about expanding skill, training, and really and making employment opportunities for career paths. So with that, in like December
Claire: we came up with a framework. And what was really cool about this workshop series that we did.
Claire: you can go to the next slide.
Claire: Was it was created by youth, so basically like with what they wanted. You know they really wanted to learn about having to find a job so like interview skills, you know they want it to be connected to ambassadors.
Claire: They wanted to have more resources for the Lgbtq 2 Us. Community. We want to have more awareness for mental health.
Claire: They wanted to have. They wanted to learn more about like their culture, their identity
Claire: as well as reconciliation. and they also talked about
Claire: financial literacy. I know when those vocal groups we heard a lot of youth say, well, like we. We want to learn about taxes like, you know those are something you're not. You're not not taught in school, so we wanted to really make sure we had these kind of 6 pieces where we could bring in different service providers that were local in Regina.
Claire: So again we had the we had the library come out to do a financial literacy course work with the indigenous advocates in our Regina public schools to come. Talk about the history of treaty for, and talk about how you can make
Claire: those acts to truth in truth and reconciliation.
Claire: We worked with one of our leaders that came out and
Claire: talked about job searching and interview skills. So that was pretty amazing to actually see some of the Ray leaders come hands on in this.
Claire: and then we had kind of like a career, fair event, and that was a really great way to kick start, because it was really kind of
Claire: interactive. So students and youth were actually able to go talk to ambassadors and recruitment and different post secondary services, and or in our city.
So that was pretty amazing to see. And then we had you of our pride come out. And they talked about allyship. which was a really amazing workshop, and that was
Claire: that was great. And then we had a mental health therapist come.
Claire: So throughout the 6 weeks you know I really seen this this group of 25 youth participants
Claire: really, you know, grow from coming from 5 different, You know, schools
Claire: when we initially started
Claire: like the first night Everybody was kind of like, you know, not knowing what we're going to get into.
Claire: And the very last session this photo here was from our wind up.
Claire: It was really great to see. You know. Everybody come together, and we played some some different games we had like Tacos, and
Claire: you know it was really amazing, and it was great for me as well, because I was able to make connection with them. And this was a really good way of keeping those connections with the Youtube, because now they're they email me. They keep stay connected with me, and they ask me if they could
Claire: when we're having a next kind of workshop. So those are all super cool things i'm looking forward to in the upcoming year, as well as introducing an employment ready program where we'll actually teach them, or we'll be able to provide them with actual certificates for
Claire: food and safe handling like limits, and all of those certificates needed. For when you're looking for a job. So that's pretty cool, and then we'll go to the next slide.
Claire: And then these are just some more photos of those workshops that we did again. I really enjoyed the activities that we had. So one night we why I slipped a group up, and we all did cultural diversity poach posters and
Claire: 3, 4 posters. So you know it was great to see them work as a team, and, like I mentioned it was an amazing diverse bunch. So a lot of them came from different parts of the world, so they were able to highlight that
Claire: and talk about it. So I really enjoyed seeing that. And again. As I mentioned, we had you of our pride come out, and they talked about allyship. and it was it was really great. It was great to see people asking questions
Claire: and how to support that. and we had an activity where we we did this much, and we had the indigenous at the kids come out and
Claire: talk about smatching and the importance of it. And yeah, it was just really great. And i'm really looking forward to the the future activities that we're going to be having and hosting with
Claire: with united way as well as getting more great ideas from our leadership than our youth leaders. Yeah, thank you
Karenveer Pannu: awesome. Thank you so much, Jody Hale and Clarice, for sharing about your communities
Karenveer Pannu: like they mentioned. They will be continuing the conversation about about each of their communities and the work that they're doing in the breakout rooms that they'll be facilitating after the Q. A.
Karenveer Pannu: But for the moment we want it to hold some time and space for a. Q. A. If you have any questions for any of our panelists, we'd encourage you to raise your hand
Karenveer Pannu: so that we can call on you, and that you can add, Ask your question to the panelists.
Karenveer Pannu: You feel free to also use a chat box if you'd prefer to
Karenveer Pannu: ask your questions that way. but for now I can begin with the Q. A.
Karenveer Pannu: I have a question to begin. I have a question for all the panelists.
Karenveer Pannu: So what are some lessons you you you guys have learned while engaging youth leaders in your community. And can we begin with, Can you begin with Jodie.
Jodie Konior: Yeah, absolutely so for for us. One of the biggest lessons that we learned within Oxford County was to really kind of change our expectations, for how we engage with you, so not every use needs to be, or even can be engaged in the same way. Hail kind of talked about this in their presentation.
Jodie Konior: really looking at customizing your approach and customizing your relationship with every single use. Some you can sit on an ongoing committee and participate on a regular basis, come to in person. Meetings attend virtually, do all those kinds of things, and do that level of engagement.
Jodie Konior: Some you want to be engaged by just supporting with, like, hey? I'm happy to help with. If you're having a one time event, i'll come and support you with any kind of volunteer that you need to help with. Set up and take down, and those kinds of things some. You want to be engaged by
Jodie Konior: answering surveys, some get, and you want to be engaged by supporting with. I I just want to support you with building your social media presence because I want social media. I'm really passionate about graphic design or different pieces like that, so really shifting and customizing Your approach to every single use, I think, is so so so important because
Jodie Konior: it's the same as engaging anybody else in in any kind of realm. No 2 people are the same, and can be engaged in the same way. So it's really important to take that time and customize your approach to everyone based on their their needs, their passions, and their goals for being involved in an initiative, because
Jodie Konior: you are doing you a favor by being involved with your initiative. There it's it's a huge benefit to you to have them involved, so they need to have benefits as well. It needs to be a mutually beneficial relationship in a lot of ways.
Jodie Konior: And so, taking the time to truly get to know what their passions and their goals are and thinking about, and every aspect of your initiative, how can I get them involved with those with those kinds of things. It's something that's so important and really like taking that time to get to know them on an individual basis is
Jodie Konior: huge, and in terms of what we've learned as well. Something that we've learned a lot is patient
Jodie Konior: is that
Jodie Konior: when engaging with youth and going through the process of youth engagement to create a really great initiative is.
Jodie Konior: you need to be okay with
Jodie Konior: a meeting ending ambiguously, you know. And you need to be okay that, like a decision doesn't need to be made every single time, oftentimes in the nonprofit world, because things move so quickly and things and it's always an ever changing environment, and everyone is doing a 1 million jobs off the size of their desk and those kinds of things we often feel like we need to get a decision, and we need to get a decision now, that's not always the case.
Jodie Konior: And so really, really being patient and allowing time for the process of innovation to happen is so important, and it's so critical for use engagement to be done effectively, and to really build on and and utilize the strength of use, because
Jodie Konior: this meeting that answer right then, and there is never, never effective. Taking the time to allow for that full process is so important, and being patient with that and learning to be okay with that discomfort in the nonprofit world is so hard. But it's so. So so beneficial to just
Jodie Konior: take the time and learn that
Jodie Konior: it's okay that there's not answers at this exact moment. And it's okay that we're still deciding. And it's okay that we're going through this process and taking time to build the relationships and doing those kinds of things, because that you're investing a lot, a lot of work to have to pay that will pay off
Jodie Konior: and dividends in the future with all of the different pieces that you'll be doing. So. Patience, I would say, is the biggest thing that we've learned, and being open to to engaging use differently. And then you're used to working when you're typically have just adults and just people who have been in the nonprofit world and have been doing collective impact work
Jodie Konior: for for years and years. It's something that's really really important.
Karenveer Pannu: awesome. Can we hear from you? The question is lessons you've learned while engaging youth leaders in your community.
Claire: Yeah, definitely, I agree with Jody and I just wanna echo her answer as well is just having patience and letting things just kind of run organically.
Claire: Also, like she mentioned it's super important to see like, and to notice that every youth has a different set of skills.
Claire: So, for example, there was a particular youth who I had in a vocal group, and they were just super great speakers, like they were great speakers. So immediately I was like, yeah, you know, like I gotta get him onto this. So
Claire: just looking at all of those different skills that you know you bring out and actually making the the space for them to share and be inspired as well super and important, you know, creating an accessible space for for comfort as well.
Claire: And I think that's that's something that needs to be also remembered is to have patience with it.
Karenveer Pannu: Hail anything to add.
Hale Ferguson: Yeah, I think we all pretty much have the same thing to say about this this question, but something I want to add that things are 100% guaranteed to go wrong.
Hale Ferguson: and that is is gonna happen. And like, for example, if you have 15, you say, yeah, we're gonna come help you set up for this pride event. We're gonna be there at 30'clock.
Hale Ferguson: 5 5 of them will show up, and that is totally fine. because they have lives to. They have things going on, and we have to remember that just because they're younger doesn't mean that they have stuff going on, and they can't make things.
Hale Ferguson: So you need to pivot at all times, just echoing up of what Jody was saying is, you want to do different things, and we need to embrace that we can't put them in one box and say.
Hale Ferguson: Well, you know you're you. So I know you're gonna love to do this because your friends are doing this, so we need to embrace all the differences in in ways in which they want to participate.
Hale Ferguson: And another thing as well. Lessons learned is that collective impact is something that is going to take a while to really
Hale Ferguson: get that formed and and work through that. I know. When we first started the project. I was like collective impact needs to be done on day one that needs to happen. And here we are in year, 3, and i'm still like.
Hale Ferguson: What is the
Hale Ferguson: So that's a huge lesson that we're still going through that we're still learning. We're still working with. And yeah, just to embrace
Hale Ferguson: the needs
Hale Ferguson: up every single youth that that you're working with, and knowing that things are gonna go awry, and that's totally fine. You just need to pivot, and it'll all work out
Karenveer Pannu: awesome. Thank you.
Karenveer Pannu: Orpa. I think you shared a question in the chat. Did you want to share it with the panelists?
Orpah Cundangan (She/Her): Sure, Thank you first of all, clear hail
Orpah Cundangan (She/Her): and Jody for sharing. I was just wondering. I know you've talked a lot about the the different events that your tables have run and things going on. I was wondering if you could share any examples you've seen of.
Orpah Cundangan (She/Her): You know, youth engagement leading to systems change where they changed policies, maybe around, like even the pride event. If there were things that you brought up that they changed because of that or
Orpah Cundangan (She/Her): practices because of because of your input. So i'd love to hear about
Orpah Cundangan (She/Her): use voice, you know.
Orpah Cundangan (She/Her): like being listen to in a in a powerful way, and not just. you know, in a way that's to organizing you. So yeah, if you have any examples to share it, they'll hear them.
Hale Ferguson: Yeah, I can start if that's okay
Hale Ferguson: at our actually at our youth led to Leadership table meeting the one with the Candy Bar.
Hale Ferguson: There were. There was someone that was working for the municipality at our leadership table meeting, who was talking to one of the youth, and it was winter time talking about how get start so early? There's something to do, and you've had mentioned that
Hale Ferguson: where they were living in like a kind of like court area, with with row houses that
Hale Ferguson: the lights on their streets weren't working for about a year, and they had contacted the municipality, and nothing had been done about it. So they weren't allowed to play outside after like 5 Pm.
Hale Ferguson: Because it was dark, and their parents would let them so. They had let the municipality staff notice, not knowing that they were a municipality staff, just an adult that wanted to listen to them.
Hale Ferguson: and within that week that light was all the lights in the rose, all the lights within the community were changed and were fixed.
Hale Ferguson: So it's something small of just being in the same room as you.
Hale Ferguson: and listening to what they have to say that a streetlight may not mean anything to any of us, but that meant that this kid is able to go
Hale Ferguson: play outside when it gets dark at 5 Pm. Like it gives them something to do.
Hale Ferguson: So that was a huge, huge thing that that happened with with our community.
Jodie Konior: Yeah, and I can. I can speak to that, too, as well, or within an Oxford county. There's been a a few things, and we've we found pretty quickly our group. We started with kind of thinking pretty program level with a lot of change, and very quickly have shifted into the need for policy change.
Jodie Konior: because we see at the core and behind every single challenge that that is like a band aid that program 6. There is the this massive flood of of of policy issues that are behind it, and looking more upstream in a variety of ways.
Jodie Konior: And so some of the things that that we've done within Oxford County is, look at identifying what our critical ships that need to happen. And what are what are some different things? And one of the biggest, biggest things we've heard was just
Jodie Konior: generally
Jodie Konior: organizations. And don't ask you anything about programs that they're doing. That that are for use is they're they're not acting or they'll say, yeah, we engage you. But they've got a survey of
Jodie Konior: 13 local use of you know, the several thousands that exist. It's. And so it's really looking at in terms of not necessarily policy, but more so. Practice is
Jodie Konior: talking to local organizations about what does this engagement actually look like? And what does that mean? And how do you do that effectively as something that's so important
Jodie Konior: and so something that we've done is we've actually hosted, and I know our our, our our colleagues, and another community that does this really, really, effectively? Is Sudbury the future North group? They do a a really really amazing job at this, where they actually do engagement of use on a They do it on a steeper service. We do it for freaks, for working on building enough for different organizations to say, hey, like, how do we engage youth, and we'll do like host focus. Groups do surveys. Do those kinds of things in us
Jodie Konior: kind of act as a consultant for organizations to to sit down and engage with you. Talk about like.
Jodie Konior: hey? Like you organizationally, what are your goals from eng engaging? You Start with the why, why do you want to engage youth, what are those things and talking about those things with them? And so, then, for example, one of the organizations that we've done this for is a local employer, our local employment agency, and we we worked with them, and they identified their goals with their like. Our social media presence is terrible for for that, and we know that's like a very primary way of engaging you.
Jodie Konior: And also we want feedback on like, what are how are you looking for jobs. So then we can create workshops and those kinds of things to support that. And then also, how do we like? They have some specific programs they want and feed back around.
Jodie Konior: And so we we held that focus group and did that, and they got a lot of really great information that then changed a lot of their programs. But ultimately what they learned was like.
Jodie Konior: It is so important to engage with you to get this information because they realize how many things they were actually not doing in line with what you wanted and what was beneficial to use, and those kinds of things. So then what they did was They've now started accepting co-OP placements from high schools with their organization and so those kinds of things. It. It might seem
Jodie Konior: like a small thing, but an organization taking on that like we are now
Jodie Konior: bringing youth into our staffing, essentially like and specifically targeting you for that purpose of youth engagement is so important. So that's something that we we've seen a lot of success in is working with organizations to to talk about the importance of having youth on staff, and engaging with youth in different ways. So that was one that was really big as well as we've done a variety of different of a couple of different like letter writing campaigns to support other different
Jodie Konior: really dig programs that are that are beneficial for for use in our community. So just recently we did one for a mobile library outreach. So we, because we are so rural, our and the rural libraries are still only in like
Jodie Konior: hubs within the communities within the within the rural communities it's. Our library has wanted to purchase a
Jodie Konior: a recommission to a former ambulance, to create a mobile library, to be able to go out to some of the most rural communities, to parks and those kinds of things different, like like
Jodie Konior: use co-ops, and adults, co-ops, and like different, like supportive housing places, to support people with learning about library services and those kinds of things.
Jodie Konior: And so that's something that we did with. We then did a letter writing campaign to talk about how you see this is really beneficial in the community and those kinds of things, and that got funded, you know. So like those kinds of things are all pieces that that we've seen a lot of effectiveness around, and we're in the midst of planning a full advocacy campaign on a a variety of different pieces within Oxford County. So there's a really a wide, ready things from that program level all the way through to organizations, to to local government as well.
Jodie Konior: We've been looking at really a wide variety of things.
Claire: Great great question. I could see a system
Claire: not so much like community shift, sorry, not so much policies, but practices. So after we finished the 6 Week Workshop series, I noticed on social media different kind of friendship. Centers and organizations within Regina have kind of
Claire: followed that lead and creating this early intervention 6 week. Course. That's kind of it's all there, you know, for youth and young adults. So I I noticed that right away, even with kind of the the names as well.
Claire: which is fine, you know it's. It's great to see that they're creating more programs like this for that targeted Age group as well. So you know it's. It's needed to have those early interventions and work, prep and university prep for that age.
Karenveer Pannu: Awesome. Thank you. Or for that great question.
Karenveer Pannu: as though we exceed that you put a question in the chat. Did you want to share with the group?
Zoey K (she/her): Yeah, for sure? Yeah. My question was in regards to
Zoey K (she/her): for all 3 of the presenters, which but level of
Zoey K (she/her): how often and frequently would you meet with these youth youth groups, or whether it's like a council group or just a leadership or youth led initiatives what's been successful, for in terms of
Zoey K (she/her): how frequently you meet in terms of yeah, not making it too much or too little, what's been effective. And then, in addition to that, what locations do you
Zoey K (she/her): go to? To encourage other school groups to get together?
Hale Ferguson: So so for myself in prince over county, we.
Hale Ferguson: it kind of depends so because we work with youth in all different sectors of the community. So when I go to the high school and work with the Gender and Sexuality Alliance. It's every Friday during my lunch hour.
Hale Ferguson: when I go to discover youth, which is a drop in queer mentorship program for
Hale Ferguson: youth under 20.
Hale Ferguson: Yeah, that's Friday afternoon, right after school.
Hale Ferguson: But then we connect with you through our communities, building new features, kind of focus group.
Hale Ferguson: which was the last Monday or the first Monday of the month. So once a month with them. and then, of course, we would have our leadership table meetings, which were the last Monday of every month.
Hale Ferguson: So it's kind of staggered around like whether i'm going to like groups of the high school groups in the community.
Hale Ferguson: or whether we're doing our leadership table meetings or our youth meetings.
Hale Ferguson: and then kinda everywhere in between, like if there was like a
Hale Ferguson: we did a sponsorship of a girls hockey team at the local high school, because there are a lot of
Hale Ferguson: girls wanted to play, but they couldn't afford to play, and, as we all know Hockey is one of the most expensive sports that we that we play here in Canada.
Hale Ferguson: So we would go to those hockey games, and we would give them pizza. It would be like, hey.
Hale Ferguson: here's some pizza You want to answer these 3 questions, or like.
Hale Ferguson: Hey, let's go rock climbing like we'll pay for this. So you want to answer 5 questions. So it was like we had. You set meetings, but that we were kinda
Hale Ferguson: sneak in there when we could, and obviously give them incentives for for their voice.
Zoey K (she/her): Thank you so much. It's helpful.
Jodie Konior: Yeah. And within Aqua County what we've done is our our youth Council, so our our kind of core, consistent group of volunteers and interns. They
Jodie Konior: we we meet once a month. So that's that the Core group who kind of guides everything we meet once a month, and we meet later in the evening to make sure that anybody can attend whether it's someone who is a high school student or a a who works full time, or any of those kinds of things. You can work, shift, work like different pieces like that we try to make sure that it's a time that as many people can come as possible. And so that's something that's really important is like, I know
Jodie Konior: we in like the and like kind of core staffing, we're all the often, or it's like the 9 to 5, the 8 to 4. Then, whatever being okay with shifting those hours, I think, is something that's really important to to do, to to be open to having meetings in the evening or weekends, or those kinds of things
Jodie Konior: to to be able to effectively engage youth while still having boundaries of work. Of course, because mental health is working on a health is important, but that's something that's really important to do is to be flexible with the timing of meetings. So we do meet with that that group once a month. But we we have subcommittees that meet very frequently throughout the month. And so that's where, when we take that that kind of customized approach that we've all kind of talked about amongst the entire panel here.
We talked to you about kind of
Jodie Konior: when we talk about your goals. Then then we say, okay, like we've got a subcommittee Who's You're really interested in mental health. We're offering free mental health trading to the community. We need help figuring out what that's gonna look like. Are you interested in being involved in that? And they'll get involved in that? We're watching a a a you social space in one of the communities we have people who are interested in that. We've got youth involved in that. We have a a focus group or a subcommittee that's focused on the sustainability of our initiative as a whole, and some you can really interested in that we did. We've done ones on evaluation. We've done ones on like
Jodie Konior: a ton of different things.
Jodie Konior: And that way we're able to have you be more actively involved in the things that they're interested in. We don't make anything mandatory. That's the biggest thing is. Do not make anything mandatory, otherwise people will say
Jodie Konior: heck. No, i'm not coming. You said you have to do this thing. You're not going to get that engagement. So, keeping it, keeping everything super voluntary, keeping it based on and framing subcommittees as like. I think this would be really good for you, because you're really interested in this. I think that you really love the work, or I think this aligns well with your career goals or those different kind of things is really really great, and having those meet super frequently typically depending on the subcommittee. It depends on what they're working on. Sometimes those subcommittees will meet once a week. Sometimes
Jodie Konior: they'll need every other week, but then we also
Jodie Konior: give like actually, like a sign work to people that again on a voluntary basis, or we'll say, oh, so this subcommittee, we say it's that our marketing subcommittee is like, oh, well, like we need some social media post about this. Who's interested in doing that? And some of the youth will say, hey, yeah, like I would really really love to do that, and giving
Jodie Konior: responsibility to use, to say, to be more involved in that. And then they're doing work on their own times, and then you meet with them and give them feedback, and do those kinds of things and build their capacity is so important.
Jodie Konior: so really kind of taking the time to to look at those those goals, and and then aligning that subcommittee work with with that, because then that way it's not always big group meetings to, because some you really Don't enjoy the really big group meetings, and they enjoy the smaller subcommittee work, and so and some people like vice versa, and those kinds of things so giving that that kind of variety of of engagement and different opportunities for engagement, I think, is really important.
Jodie Konior: and in terms of location. I know you, after that location as well. We what we've done is we've looked at different community spaces that exist and are always really mindful of.
Jodie Konior: What do those spaces mean to people. So, for example, we're never going to host a meeting at a high school, because we have use on our subcommittee or on our on our youth Council, who said, like school, is not a safe space for me. School is somewhere that I don't feel welcome. School is somewhere that I don't feel safe. We have certain like something that we've looked at is like
Jodie Konior: partnering with private businesses to use their space for like something fun like hail was talking about with like doing a bit more of a fun thing in a meeting. But then we talk to business. We look into the background of the business, and we find out oh, no, like they've They've
Jodie Konior: kind of posted about things that are not in line with with our our values of they. They posted, say, homophobic transfer. But those kinds of things online, and we're like, absolutely not that's not in mind with our values. So we won't. Go there. So we look at kind of a variety of places, and we've found, especially being a rural community. Roaming locations is huge.
Jodie Konior: It's such a good way to be able to engage, even
Jodie Konior: show to rural you that their time is just as valuable as you, living in those core municipalities, because it's saying like, hey, we'll come to you. You don't always need to come to us, and really kind of taking like the the time to do that and look at different spaces. You know whether it's.
Jodie Konior: It might be a legion, and sometimes we've actually held them in parks in the summer, and people have really loved that, too, because it's the time to be outside, and those different things so really being open to to to just thinking
Jodie Konior: definitely like, Imagine it's like, Where would I want to go to hang out with a big group of my friends, and thinking about that with your your meetings rather than it being, where am I having a meeting, because that has is actually been a a really really beneficial for us, for getting more used to attend meetings. I'm not sure, Claire, if you have
Jodie Konior: other thoughts for how you how you do that in Regina.
Claire: No, I agree with you not holding them in schools, making sure that that space is accessible as possible as well. I know hosting them online is also easy to access for some youth.
Claire: and also kind of you know.
Claire: some. You don't want to show up in person, and have, you know, some social anxiety. So making it easy for everybody to kind of come together is super important, and I also liked what you said about
Claire: not making it mandatory. But then also, you have those challenges of some leaders who are just so at high level. For, like using Regina as an example that it's hard for them to like. Come to those. So you actually have to reach out and do it individually. That which kind of makes it a little bit challenging, just because then.
Claire: you know, they don't get to have those youth voices, you know, because they miss the meeting so definitely. I love
Claire: with both. You inhale your answers, and you know it's great to hear that. So
Claire: thanks.
Karenveer Pannu: awesome. Thank you so much for the for these questions and thank you again to our panelists for your thoughtful. It looks like Kathy has her hand up.
Karenveer Pannu: Welcome back everyone.
Jodie Konior: Karen Beer kind of say something real quick
Jodie Konior: for my group. There were a few resources I wanted to share around use engagement, and I will share them in the chat now for you to be able to kind of click at and and look to that are really really great resources on kind of that general use engagement so, and anybody who wasn't in my group, if you want to see them, then you can see them too, so i'll share those in the chat. Now.
Karenveer Pannu: Awesome. How about to start? We do a little bit of a share back. Jody Hale. Clarice, Did you want to? Maybe briefly share about the discussions you guys had in your rooms.
Karenveer Pannu: and at this time everyone else. We could also do a bit of sharing as well. We'd love to hear about what you learned during this workshop during your breakout room, so feel free to share that as well in the chat.
Karenveer Pannu: So
Claire: yeah, so we were just about to get into our engagement activity before we
Claire: came back into
Claire: or main room here. So you know just a little bit of timing. But it was great, you know I I shared, and I will love and invite anybody in my group to kind of share. You know anything main takeaways.
Claire: you know. We could also have a quick discussion.
Orpah Cundangan (She/Her): Yeah, thanks, Claire.
Orpah Cundangan (She/Her): I would love it if you could share the the stigma.
Orpah Cundangan (She/Her): or it is all that you were going to link in our group, but we had a we heard from Claire about some of the practices that
Orpah Cundangan (She/Her): you know organizations can do to better engage
Orpah Cundangan (She/Her): indigenous youth, and Angelina also shared some incredible stuff that they're doing at their organization. But Clara left us with the reminder that about Michael's opening plenary for all of us about intergenerational love, and how important that is.
Orpah Cundangan (She/Her): I'm. In part of that is, you know, creating safe spaces for
Orpah Cundangan (She/Her): revitalized activities, as I think what you called it Claire, which is a term that's new to me. So it's really awesome to hear about.
Orpah Cundangan (She/Her): But yeah, giving indigenous youth this space and accessibility to engage with their culture and to learn about other cultures as well. So things like.
Orpah Cundangan (She/Her): yeah, beating ribbon script, making learning how to make panic different activities like that, and just keeping in mind that those activities have to be engaged in in a safe
Orpah Cundangan (She/Her): and culturally safe way.
Orpah Cundangan (She/Her): Yeah, I don't know if there's anything else that folks wanted to add. Angelina.
Karenveer Pannu: Well, do you want to hear a few words about the discussion in your room, or does anybody in Fields breakout room want to share.
Hale Ferguson: I can talk super quick about just a bit about what we talked about. We didn't get to
Hale Ferguson: our
Hale Ferguson: our engagement part, but so I kind of talked the whole time so sorry about that. But we really just talked about issues that that
Hale Ferguson: Lgbtq you are facing in rural communities from the viewpoint of the youth that I I work with as well as the you find out of myself growing up here as a queer and trans person that was unable to be
Hale Ferguson: out really queer and Trans. And had to move away and come back in order to be able to to
Hale Ferguson: do that, and just talking about ways in which we can support youth in establishing your features that are queer youth to establish a features, and the fact that the queer use. They are going to be queer adults leading us tomorrow in a way, and I think we forget that, and that we need to pave the path forward for them to have successful lives.
Hale Ferguson: So education in the community providing resources, free resources, such as going to I linked to a website called the 509, which is an organization out of Toronto, and they have free resources that are printable that you can.
Hale Ferguson: But we have them all over our space here.
Hale Ferguson: offering mentorship and connecting to square Lgbtq, Lgbtq. Plus youth to adults.
Hale Ferguson: allies, and and mentors, and celebrating diversity in the sense of that we can out really celebrate pride which is coming up. But you need to inwardly celebrate that as well, and and contact
Hale Ferguson: queer and trans people, and hire them to come to your work and do diversity, training, and and celebrate pride inwardly as much as you do Outwardly it's. It's not a tokenistic thing. It's something that we all need to work on, and we need to learn how to create and establish safe spaces for trans and queer people in the workplace as well as in schools.
Karenveer Pannu: Thank you, Jody. Did you want to share, or anyone from Jody's Breakout Rooms want to share about their learnings?
Jodie Konior: Yeah, I'm: I'm happy to share. And what we what we really talked about for the the bulk of ours is talking about
Jodie Konior: engagement as a key process to get to solutions, because we heard that, like they're all of these really, really, really big challenges that you are facing in terms of looking at like the housing crisis that exists. All look all across Canada, particularly in like Southern Ontario. We see we see it a lot looking at a lot of these like really really big issues
Jodie Konior: and talking about. We really talked about how
Jodie Konior: taking the time to to engage with you and do do these kinds of things that we've talked about today helps give you solutions to those those big challenges. So it's not
Jodie Konior: that there's there's not solutions happening. It's like there's really great work being done all all across the country and and trying to support you. But really engagement is
Jodie Konior: the first step to be able to to create those those actual changes and changes to implementation of programs changes to the greater system. Those kinds of things useful give you answers if you ask them
Jodie Konior: questions. And so really taking the time to do. That is a a critical critical part. And we also talked about how, in the the kind of post Covid world where where things are are opening up a lot more. What does how do you effectively engage you? And we talked about how like
Jodie Konior: in meetings, allowing for different types of engagement to happen. So, like doing both small groups and large groups, and making like allowing time for games for like learning to socialize, because we've heard a lot from our our, these who are involved with our initiative in terms of goals. When we, when we talk to people when they first start out, we always ask them, what are your goals with being involved with that?
Jodie Konior: And a big thing that we hear is like. I just want to learn how to socialize again, or I don't want to learn how to socialize, because i'm not used to being around people and those kinds of things. So giving opportunities for just like social building, connection and relationship building, while also still looking at when you're having that that bigger discussion that's about the things that your initiative is about doing large groups, small groups, different types of activities to allow for for folks to feel comfortable and gain exposure to being in this
Jodie Konior: kind of social in person world in a variety of ways
Karenveer Pannu: awesome. Thank you.
Karenveer Pannu: So we've reached the end of our workshop, and I just wanted to say a quick thank you to our panelists once again. Thank you, Jodie. Thank you, Hale. Thank you, Clarice, for sharing about the amazing work for doing in your communities.
Karenveer Pannu: We have also reached the end of the summit itself. And so I did want to take some time to encourage you all to return after the session, to return to house space, so that you can attend the closing with the elder.
Karenveer Pannu: But once again thank you for your engagement. Throughout this workshop and throughout the summit it was really great. Having.
Karenveer Pannu: or being able to hold this space with you all. as you leave, feel free to share maybe one or 2 words about how you're feeling after this workshop in the chat.