Another successful BYTE Leaders in Training conference has come and gone – the fourth one. It was held from March 11 to 13. The idea behind the conference is give youth leadership skills to take back to their communities.
Youth come from communities across the north to learn skills from BYTE facilitators and special guests. In years previous the conferences were held in hotel conference rooms in Whitehorse. This year two days of the conference were held at the Jackson Lake Healing Centre. This is a 20 minute drive outside of Whitehorse, on Kwanlin Dün First Nation territory.
Youth came from seven communities: Dawson City, Fort McPherson, Mayo, Pelly Crossing, Carcross, Haines Junction, Faro and Ross River. Sixteen youth attended the conference in total, along with chaperones from each community.
The weekend of March 11 to 13 was a glorious one – the temperature was mild and the sky was a deep blue. The sun was made brighter by the white snow still on the ground at the Jackson Lake Healing Centre. On Saturday, March 12 youth spilled out of the small log cabin after lunch, squinting their eyes against the sun. They sat on logs in groups around a fire, or stood in small clusters, faces toward the sky to catch the unseasonable warmth of the direct sunlight.
Two youth from Fort McPherson, Cassandra and Danika, approached me and introduced themselves. I snapped their photo and asked them about the conference. They said they were enjoying the conference. Especially the parts where they got to explain to everyone else who they are, and when they got to hear about culture from other northern communities. They said their culture is who they are, and it is important to them.
Later, special guest James Jones, a hoop-dancer who is well known for his tours with the musical group A Tribe Called Red talked about what it means to be an Indigenous person today. His message was that a person needs to know who they are before they can lead others in their communities. The workshops in the conference get to the core of matters, and that is the part that the youth seem to especially enjoy, as expressed by the young women from Fort McPherson.
Each year the conferences have had different themes. This year’s juxtaposed the the local Yukon First Nations against an international context; youth were given exercises to think about their place in the world. Each year new youth come to the conference, but some return, to learn new skills, and hone ones already taught. It is a given that leadership skills cannot be learned in one single weekend, which is why the continuity of the conference is crucial to its success.
Another ongoing thread of the Leaders in Training conference has been the struggle to get funding. The conference costs about $30,000 to put together. The first year this was covered by a Yukon government Community Development Fund. The next two years, BYTE got grants from the Crime Prevention Victim Services Trust Fund.
Unfortunately those grants weren’t available to fund the fourth Leaders in Training conference. BYTE employees realized this early on, and put out a call in May of 2015 for the public to vote for BYTE on the Inspired Minds Learning Project page. This is an online contest that rewards the organization with the most votes with money to fund a project. BYTE needed 250 votes. It didn’t get that many.
After that plan fell through, organizers of this year’s conference struggled to find funding. Eventually they found money from three amazing supporters: The Northern Council for Global Cooperation, the Tides Canada Full Circle Fund and The Arctic Institute of Community-Based Research.
BYTE is extremely grateful for the funding that allows it to continue the conference. It is hoping to receive another Tides Canada Full Circle Fund next year, but it isn’t guaranteed.
The money goes toward bringing youth from communities to Whitehorse, and bringing in special guests for the conference. Everyone is also fed, and provided with hotel rooms.
This year the guests were the aforementioned dancer, James Jones. Also, Kwanlin Dün First Nation’s Les Walker and Carcross-Tagish First Nation Elder Phil Gattensby put on a very powerful workshop on Friday, where the youth were inspired to share ideas of their culture. On Sunday Leonard Boniface was a special guest.
Leonard is a Yukoner who is originally from Tanzania, Africa. He performs in a musical group. He also started a non-profit called, Teenage Life and Young Adults International. This is a group that teaches youth leadership skills – exactly like the conference! The difference is, Leonard started this work in the villages of Tanzania. It wasn’t until he came to the Yukon that he created the non-profit. He gave a global perspective to the youth from rural Yukon communities that is invaluable to their outlook; in speaking about challenges and benefits from rural Tanzanian communities, youth in the Yukon were able to see similarities in their own communities – and differences, of course. This global perspective serves to shrink the world for people, and helps young people develop a context for the challenges and benefits of their own upbringing.
It isn’t just youth that are given skills at the Leaders in Training conferences. Their chaperones are in separate workshops, simultaneously. Chaperones are generally youth workers in the communities. This year they sat in on workshops about suicide prevention, developmental asset training, and leadership and community training. These are valuable skills taught by a range of experts. Chaperones are therefore given tools to take home to their communities and work, to continue to teach youth how to be leaders throughout the entire year.
A final common thread through out the four LIT conference is the hard work and commitment BYTE staff gave to pull them off. This year was no different. But at the end of it all, all that staff member Natalie Sands could talk about was the satisfaction of hearing honest responses from youth about what they love about the communities in which they live. She said one person said they loved how small their community is, and how close knit. The thing she didn’t like was contact with people who abuse drugs and alcohol. That openness and honesty is testimony to the fact that the conference gets through to those who attend.
