Description

Youth Leadership Challenge (YLC) is a day-long competition co-sponsored by Steps Together Foundation, consisting of three core activities focused on building leadership skills. The event is open to all grade 11 and 12 students across BC, and each year, 16-25 youth are accepted for registration into the program. The challenge places youth into groups of 5, who together, compete throughout the day for the YLC Victory Cup. Through the all-day challenge, accepted participants will experience classic leadership-oriented team building activities, physical challenges and our feature event; the community panel presentation. Our goal is simple: create a space that encourages young leaders to understand how to utilize their leadership skills in practical, real-world scenarios. As a Political Science student at the University of British Columbia, I wanted the challenge to help local youth better understand their capability for civic engagement. At the heart of the challenge is our “community panel presentation” a team-based activity focused on building solutions for community issues. Teams of five will have to produce a well thought out presentation representing their solutions and policy suggestions for a community issue. The activity is a way for young leaders to materialize the ideas and opinions they've wanted to share through direct interaction with policymakers from every level of government. The panel presentation is a space for creativity, conversation, empowerment and action. It values teamwork, originality, feasibility and communication. To help better visualize measurable outcomes from their efforts, our community dialogue panel, including policymakers and politician, will be asked to share progress on the implementation of the winning team's suggestions. More than anything, the activity is a space for essential conversations on relevant social issues; our attempt to create a new channel of dialogue for youth-driven change. The primary use of any funding received by Rising Youth will be to cover costs to run the event that is currently not funded by our partner organizations.