Dawson Youth Council x Speaking Rights x 130 youth

This past May, we cohosted the Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada ’National Youth Forum: Express Yourself 2019 ′. We facilitated an activity from the Speaking Rights toolkit with 130 youth from across Canada. The experience was beyond amazing!

Our group had the mandate to prepare for the opening ceremony, facilitate a Speaking Rights workshop, animate two activity stations and co-animate the club visit. Prior to the Youth Forum, on top of planning our co-host duties: we had to work on our communication skills and our feedback delivery. We had a facilitator’s training and several team-building workshops. The Speaking Rights toolkit was instrumental during the event. It was our guide throughout each session because it had all the components on how to become an effective leader, a mindful community worker, a strong human rights defender and a great public speaker (facilitator).

We truly were in this together, our individual challenges and our successes were interconnected as a group. Once we realized that, our anxiety level dropped significantly. We were not going to let each other fail, all the preparation, the trials and errors were setting us up for success.