Sturgeon County students rallied in Morinville this week to try and Ignite a spark of positive change in their schools.
About 125 junior and senior high school students from Sturgeon County gathered at Morinville’s Community Cultural Centre this Tuesday and Wednesday for the inaugural Ignite Youth Action Conference.
The conference was a joint initiative between Sturgeon School Division, Greater St. Albert Catholic Schools and the Kipohtakow Education Centre to promote student health and citizenship.
The idea was to build capacity in these students to be positive role models in their schools, said conference co-chair Thomas Holmes, conference co-chair and system psychologist for the Sturgeon School Division.
“When our peers teach us something and set an example for us, it has a really powerful effect on making change.”
Students spent the conference learning about substance abuse, abuse prevention, emotional health and online safety from Alberta Health Services and Red Cross officials, Holmes said. Those students will now go back to their schools and come up with unique ways to teach their peers about what they learned.
Students also got to write messages on a large “graffiti wall” of paper, Holmes said. He wasn’t sure what would be done with the wall afterwards, but suspected that it would tour local schools.
Morinville Coun. Brennan Fitzgerald gave the keynote address Tuesday.
“My goal is not to talk at the young people, it’s to talk with them,” he said in advance of his address. His talk was less of a speech and more of a conversation with the students as a result.
“We often make leadership something bigger than us, something reserved for the rich, the powerful, the influential,” he said.
His message to the students was that leadership was a part of all of us and could be used in our daily lives.
“Leadership can be as big as changing the world or as small as how we interact with another person,” he said. You don’t have to be perfect to set a good example, he added.
Young people are the future and we need their input to plan for the future, Fitzgerald said.
“I don’t understand how we can plan for the future if we’re not getting the opinions of the people who are going to be living in that future.”
Holmes said he hoped to hold this conference every three years or so.
