#PASSIONTOPURPOSE
Virtual Youth Leadership Summit
Adapt, Evolve, and Lead in a post-pandemic world
What to Expect
Develop your project
Discover ways you can make difference in your community. Learn best practices, tips and tricks for launching your service project.
Collaborate across Canada
Connect with like-minded youth across the country, share ideas, network, and make new friends!
Find inspiration
Hear from insightful speakers real life stories of creating purposeful service initiatives, and find inspiration in launching your own.
Event Schedule
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT. BUILDING YOU!
The first day focuses on rebuilding your confidence in your ability and skills while also discussing ways to energize oneself from COVID-19 fatigue. Presentations and interactive workshops will revolve around working on the skills you may have lost touch with during quarantine and lockdown due to lack of in person interaction with others.
11:30 AM EST
OPENING REMARKS
11:45 AM EST
LEADERSHIP DURING TIMES OF CHANGE
Alison Springer, Founder, Young Women of Power
12:30 PM EST
WHAT ARE MY GENII?
Melissa Tobin, Award Holder
1:15 PM EST
NETWORKING BREAK
1:40 PM EST
DESIGNING YOUR FUTURE
Swish Goswami, CEO, Trufan
2:30 PM EST
WHAT DO I HAVE TO OFFER?
Joelle McPhee, Director of Product Marketing, Scholastic Education Solutions
3:20 PM EST
ALUMNI Q&A PANEL
3:35 PM EST
CLOSING REMARKS
3:40 PM EST
HOMEWORK CLUB
DAY END 4:30 PM EST
FINDING YOUR LIGHT! COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
The second day build on the skills and abilities discovered during Day 1. The sessions and workshops on Day 2 will focus on matching your skill sets and passions to workable solutions for community impact. It looks at what you can offer to your community as solutions for community issues and how these solutions can be designed to fit the community’s needs.
11:30 AM EST
OPENING REMARKS
11:35 AM EST
WHAT CAN I DO FOR MY COMMUNITY?
12:25 PM EST
A LOOK INTO MY COMMUNITY
Saifon Diallo, Alex Siriya, & David Lingisi, Never Gonna Stop Youth Group
1:15 PM EST
NETWORKING BREAK
1:40 PM EST
IMPLEMENTING CHANGE IN THE COMMUNITY
Sabrina Craig, Vaccine Hunters
2:25 PM EST
DESIGNING A CHANGE PLAN
Sabrina Craig, Vaccine Hunters
Shelan Emre, Award Holder
3:20 PM EST
ALUMNI Q&A PANEL
3:30 PM EST
CLOSING REMARKS
3:40 PM EST
HOMEWORK CLUB
DAY ENDS 4:30 PM EST
BUILDING YOUR PASSION INTO A PROJECT
Day 3 is all workshops that are designed to support building out and developing a small scale project for community impact. Workshop activities will focus on solution building, resource mapping, budget planning and project timelines. You will utilize the Award’s Community Action Plan workbook to focus on and map out a community engagement action plan.
11:30 AM EST
OPENING REMARKS
11:40 AM EST
MY SMALL SCALE SOLUTION
Hannah Jackson, Award Holder
12:30 PM EST
RESOURCE MAPPING
Jeevana Rajkumar, The Award – Canada
1:20 PM EST
NETWORKING BREAK
1:45 PM EST
BUDGET PLANNING
RBC, Future Launch
2:45 PM EST
TIME MANAGEMENT
Amy Skinner, Award Holder
3:35 PM EST
ALUMNI Q&A PANEL
3:45 PM EST
CLOSING REMARKS
3:50 PM EST
HOMEWORK CLUB
DAY ENDS 4:40 PM EST
LEADER’S TOOLKIT: BUILDING YOUR SKILL SET
Day 4 offers option workshops for participants during the morning and afternoons. You can choose to attend the workshops or work with your group on designing a sample project idea for presentation day. Workshops include topics on civic engagement, social responsibility, systemic change, project management, entrepreneurship and dedicated sessions for Duke of Ed participants working on their Award.
11:30 AM EST
OPENING REMARKS
11:35 AM EST
PUBLIC SPEAKING AND PRESENTATION
Sandra Corelli, Founder & CEO, Humanicity Consulting Group
1:35 PM EST
NETWORKING BREAK
2:05 PM EST
Workshop A
ENTREPRENEURSHIP 101
Jeph Maystruck
Workshop B
PROJECT MANAGEMENT 101
Troy Herman, The Award – Canada
Workshop C
CIVIC ENGAGEMENT & SYSTEMIC CHANGE
Taha Habib, Apathy is Boring
Register here for your preferred workshop!
4:05 PM EST
CLOSING REMARKS
3:50 PM EST
HOMEWORK CLUB
DAY ENDS 5:05 PM EST
SERVICE PROJECT PRESENTATIONS
The final day of the event is presentation day. Participant groups will deliver their project ideas to the panel for a chance to win a scale up grant. In the morning, those who wish to present will be put in groups to have a communication/presentation workshop review with industry leaders. Every participant who attends our Virtual leadership summit will qualify for a P2P community service grant.
11:30 AM EST
OPENING REMARKS
11:35 AM EST
INDIGENOUS ALLYSHIP
3 Things Consulting
1:35 PM EST
NETWORKING BREAK
2:05 PM EST
PROJECT PRESENTATIONS
2:50 PM EST
PASSIONON TO PURPOSEE GRANTS
3:20 PM EST
Q&A
4:00 PM EST
CLOSING REMARKS
DAY ENDS 4:10 PM EST
Select your Day 4 Workshop
On Day 4, Leader’s Toolkit: Building your Skill Set, participants will select a preferred workshop for the afternoon session. Be sure to register for your preferred workshop in advance! There is limited space so it will be on a first come first serve basis.
Speakers
Our speaker Alison Springer has been working with youth for over 20 years and she loves it. Living in Calgary, she is a professional youth speaker who travels all across Canada to speak to students at schools, camps, and conferences. Alison is also the Founder of Young Women of Power an organization that inspires female greatness hosting a Conference every year for teens girls this year in October. Alison was awarded the 2019 Women of Inspiration Difference Maker Award for the impact she has on youth and especially females across Canada. She coached High School basketball for so many years, but don’t be fooled, her favourite sport is actually…volleyball.
Alison is passionate about helping students discover the greatness that lies within, while placing high value on people and self. Too often it is easier to see our weaknesses than our strengths, which affects how we treat each other. Get ready to view your weaknesses in a new light.
Melissa Tobin is an Award alumni and a passionate leader from Newfoundland and Labrador. She is a cat lover, outdoor enthusiast and a third year medical student at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Melissa is a long time volunteer with Special Olympics and has held numerous leadership positions at the local and provincial level. She attended the first P2P Forum in 2018 and subsequently created the Sunshine Swim Camp. In 2020, she was awarded a $15,000 scale up grant from the Duke of Ed and created Sunshine Kindness Kits and the Sunshine Summer Challenge. Melissa’s is looking forward to continuing her impact by mentoring other youth to create change in their communities.
Joelle MacPhee is a passionate product marketer who loves working on educational products that make a difference. After graduating from business school, Joelle joined her grandmother, a leading reading researcher, to launch Ooka Island, a research-based, reading company for students in grades PreK-2. During this time, Joelle applied her “try anything once” marketing philosophy and scaled Ooka Island’s user base worldwide in 36 countries. Joelle has appeared on CBC’s Dragons’ Den, BNN’s Disruptors Series, and the W Network’s Backyard Inventors. In 2017, Ooka Island was acquired by leading children’s publisher, Scholastic, and in 2019, Ooka Island won the prestigious CODiES Award for Best Educational App. Today, Joelle works for Scholastic Education Solutions as Director of Product Marketing.
Swish Goswami, 24, is the CEO of Trufan, a tech company building products that improve brand engagement while respecting a consumer’s right to privacy and compensation. His company has made two acquisitions, raised over $4.1M to date (from several NBA players and venture firms) and has clients like Sony Music, Netflix, NBA, NFL, P&G and a plethora of small to medium sized businesses.
Swish has given three TEDx talks, secured a publishing deal with Kogan Page and a sneaker deal with K-Swiss, and set up an angel fund called AGEX Capital. Through AGEX, he is an advisor/investor in popular social companies like Upstream, FaZe Clan and Ashare. Swish has a personal following of over 200,000. For his entrepreneurial and philanthropic achievements, Swish was inducted into Plan Canada’s Top 20 under 20, recognized as LinkedIn’s Top Voice and Startup Canada’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year and awarded the United Nation’s Outstanding Youth Leadership award.
Saifon Diallo immigrated from Guinea and started playing basketball at the age of fourteen. Despite his passion for the game, Saifon lacked family and financial support, which made it difficult for him to attain opportunities that his friends and teammates were graced with. Saifon is still working hard towards fulfilling his dream of making it to the professional league and inspiring the youth around him.
David Lingisi, 24, born in Montreal, Quebec and raised in Hamilton, Ontario from the age of 4 has been battling with sickle cell disease his entire life. As a producer and entrepreneur, David’s illness has limited his ability to move forward with his career. Through it all, David never gave up and is actively working towards being a successful and professional music producer and an entrepreneur. David also mentors the youth and is the co-founder of a non for profit organization called Never Gonna Stop Community Center For The Arts.
Alex Siriya immigrated from Zimbabwe at the age of 12, and soon realized the difference between cultures and how hard it was to fit in. Thanks to music and sports which made it easy for him to connect with new people and express himself. Having to keep moving from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, he soon realized that there were a lot more youths who were like him because of lack of mentorship and opportunities who would rather turn to other vices (most of the time illegal and detrimental). Now he is currently one of the leaders in NGS who work directly with the youth from different backgrounds and face different barriers.
Sabrina Craig is Director at Vaccine Hunters Canada, that is to say that she spends most of her time figuring out ways to connect with people to get them vaccinated. She first joined Vaccine Hunters Canada when the account on twitter had 6k followers and has since specialized in building relationships with healthcare, corporate orgs. and the communities they operate in to distribute vaccines. By day, Sabrina works as a Technical Analyst in Capital Markets on Bay Street. Sabrina’s interest is to gather insights and make connections to make systems work better and help people.
Shelan Emre is a Bronze, Silver and Gold Award Achiever from Winnipeg, Manitoba. She is currently a University student at the Asper School of Business studying Social Entrepreneurship and has plans to continue making change after graduation. As a community member Shelan volunteers with various organizations and has created multiple passion projects including new comer care packages, inner-city youth sleepovers and food hampers. Shelan is excited to encourage and guide young people to develop their passion and make change in their community.
Hannah Jackson is a photographer and P2P alumni. During the heart of the Covid-19 pandemic in Nova Scotia, she was awarded another grant through the Duke Den’s Scale-Up grants that were used to create self-care and mental health wellness kits for the youth in my community. Hannah went to school for Nonprofit management, and during my time there, she was able to develop and test out even more of her ideas through a co-op. Hannah has done a few workshops and has created and offered phototherapy. She now plan to continue to grow her project into a sustainable organization that will serve her community.
Jeevana is the current Senior Regional Manager for Inclusion at the Award Canada. Coming from an immigrant family that fled civil unrest, she understands how lived experiences, socioeconomic privilege and access to platforms can heavily influence the way young people interact with their environment. Believing firmly that no single approach is right for every young person, she works with each grantee to support their application through the various bursary programs. Her background in grants administration and youth support roles guide her relationship with each young person that she works with. Her goal is to support these changemakers through their project journeys, in ways that best fit their needs.
Amy Skinner is a fourth year social studies education student at the University of Calgary who has always been passionate about working with children and investing in her community. For the past two years Amy has created Summer Camp In A Box for Camp Kindle which supports families impacted by pediatric cancer in Southern Alberta. These packages were created with the families in mind knowing that they attend Camp Kindle as a safe break from treatments. Amy currently works at Journey Church in Calgary as the Children’s Ministry Director where she can apply her learning and invest her time further into her community in various facets. She is an alumni of the Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award, earning her Bronze, Silver and Gold Awards.
Sandra Corelli is Founder & CEO of Humanicity Consulting Group. Over her career she has discovered the key elements that go into creating healthier, more inclusive, and innovative workplaces, that drive high-performance and leading engagement. This inspired her mission to redefine leadership by building human-centric cultures where both businesses and
people can thrive. She is passionate about empowering people to be more intentional about how they work, lead and live, leading to a positive impact within themselves, their company, and their workplace culture.
Sandra believes that connection is at the heart of leadership – when you are clear about your purpose, you can lead with intention, nurture inclusion, and create lasting impact. She is a keynote speaker, consultant, facilitator, mediator and coach. Her areas of expertise include leadership development, building cultures of inclusion, confidence building and mindset coaching, emotional intelligence, well-being in the workplace through burnout prevention and building collective resilience, and strategies and programs to accelerate the advancement of women. She currently serves on the National Board of Directors for The Duke of Edinburgh International Award as HR Director-at-Large in support of developing leadership life skills in youth.
Jeph has an utter disregard for the status quo. He gives keynotes regularly on marketing and social media, hands out lottery tickets daily, and runs a marketing company out of Regina called Strategy Lab. Outside of “work” Jeph co-founded Big Idea Camp, co-founded The Honest Conference, and has taught Marketing at Saskatchewan Polytechnic and the University of Regina. Jeph has published over 100 songs on Soundcloud (so he’s technically a DJ) but his greatest achievement in life so far has been fatherhood – he currently has a 2 year old and a 1 month old.
Troy Herman is an energetic, dynamic, and driven leader who continually inspires his colleagues to push the boundaries of excellence and achieve project success. The experience of a positive team is important to Troy and he is known for his relational leadership qualities. From an earlier consideration of sports and radio broadcasting, Troy’s post-secondary pursuits in broadcasting communications led him in a different direction with his career, yet his passions for communication remained. His work has included Telus, CP Rail, and WestJet where he led several national and capital projects. His legacy project is WestJet Link, a joint venture undertaking between WestJet and Pacific Coastal airlines. Furthermore, Troy developed a mentorship program for Lean Six Sigma and Project Management for WestJet’s operational teams. Currently, Troy is the Project Director for the Duke of Edinburgh award – Canada. In addition to work, Troy enjoyed volunteering in many youth-oriented endeavors to support his son and other youth in having positive mentors, recreational opportunities, and developing leadership skills. When time permits, you will also find Troy with a paintbrush in hand working on a canvas.
Taharima has been working at Apathy is Boring for more than 2 years as Communications Coordinator, and is now the Youth Friendly Program’s (YF) Lead. Before joining AisB, Taha served as President of the Board of Directors for Rock Camp Montreal for 2 years, and community center coordinator in NDG. Youth engagement, and the accessibility of participating in every and any level of democratic processes, in decision making and in any community leadership spaces, are very near and dear to Taharima. She now works closely with Canadian partners to support them in working towards AisB’s vision of young change-makers actively engaged at every level of democracy through their own organization’s work.
Passion to Purpose Grant Resources
Community Action Guide
Download the guidebook to get started in planning your service project.
S.M.A.R.T Goals
Learn to plan your project effectively and efficiently with the SMART Goal framework.
P2P to Gold
Learn how a P2P project can count as the Gold Project for your Duke of Ed Award.
Our Partners
Canada Service Corps
Canada Service Corps is a federal program that is being developed by youth, for youth. The program aims to support young Canadians to get involved in their community through service opportunities, while at the same time gaining valuable skills that will benefit them in life and work.
