Corner Brook -
The youth of Newfoundland and Labrador have the opportunity to discover their potential as global leaders through an international development conference in St. John's next week.
Corner Brook native Laura Payne, a fourth-year chemical engineering student at Dalhousie University, is leading the way in ensuring high school students in her home province are engaged when the 2010 Engineers Without Borders (EWB) National Conference is held in the capital city from Wednesday to Saturday. She is part of the national team co-ordinating the massive outreach event.
The 400 delegates will go to 11 schools in the St. John's area to deliver classroom presentations and other schools in the province can avail of the event through a live broadcast. More than 4,000 high school students are expected to benefit from it.
"I want to be able to show the youth of Newfoundland they have so much potential, and not to just settle for the minimum," Payne said. " ... The point is to empower the students to see themselves as change leaders and to inspire them to take positive action in their school and community. We want to show them they do have influencing powers and they are connected to the rest of the world, and demonstrate what actions they can take to create change."
More than 400 people from across Canada and Africa will be attending the conference, the largest annual international development conference in Canada, at the Delta Hotel. It will be the first time the event has been hosted east of Montreal, Que.
Payne, a Regina High School graduate, said it means a great deal to her to come to her home province and play a helping hand in hosting the largest conference of its type the province has seen.
She hopes the young students who take in the massive outreach event, whether it be through the live presentation or via the broadcast, are inspired to make changes in their own lives.
"They will leave these sessions energized and equipped with tools to start taking actions as global citizens," she said. "The main idea is to create a global mindset that, it is not just you in the world, that you are connected to every single person. You can affect somebody, whether it is in your own town or somebody in Sub-Saharan Africa."
The students will also be given the opportunity to take their first step in a major movement, an initiative she said is being kept as a surprise.
The annual national conference brings together hundreds of student leaders and professional engineers from across the country to explore and discuss the complexities of international development. This conference, hosted by the Memorial University chapter of Engineers Without Borders, is the ninth.
It will feature keynote speakers from Canada and Africa, extensive workshops and discussions for student leaders, and the outreach event.
For Payne, it is an opportunity to expand the extensive networking connections she has established through Engineers Without Borders. She is also looking forward to learning from the African delegates and the Canadian delegates who have volunteered overseas.
