#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.

P2P group collaboration

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. 

“At the [2020 Passion to Purpose Bootcamp] I had the opportunity to hear about several successful projects... listen to keynote speakers, take part in workshops... and this inspired me to lead my own. I am now organizing a four-week program for teenagers around resiliency and mental health. [Passion to Purpose] has given me confidence to put together my own service project, and I am so excited to be able to do so.”
Photo of Carissa Konesky
Carissa Konesky
Bronze, Silver, and Gold Award Achiever, and Passion to Purpose Grantee

Schedule

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.

Presentations Sign Up

Click the button below to submit your interest in presenting your sample project idea to this year’s participant delegation. Remember, if you are using this summit as your Gold Project, you are required to present. All members of the Gold group should be on camera and ready to answer any questions asked of the group. 

Event Resources

Event Workbook

Download the digital version of your event workbook.

Action Guide

The Community Action Guide will help you plan your service project.

Project Success Guide

Use this guide to help ensure that your project is a success.

Project Templates

Check out these helpful project templates 

SMART Goals

Learn to plan your project effectively with the SMART Goal framework.

Grant Applications

Learn about the grant requirements and how to apply.

Mentorship Calls

Schedule a call to get help with your grant application or service project.

Zoom Background

Download our P2P event Zoom backgrounds!

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

Melissa Tobin is an Award alumni and a passionate leader from Newfoundland and LabradorShe is a cat lover, outdoor enthusiast and 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

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

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

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

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

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 Rajkumar

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

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 Maystruck

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.

Taha Habib

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. 

Since the age of 15, Quanah Traviss has dedicated his time to lifting the voice of Indigenous students within the Kingston area, and although he’s just finished a victory lap in high school, he has no plans to stop any time soon. Quanah was the first Limestone District School Board Indigenous Student Trustee which helped him learn about leadership at a higher level, while enabling him to better himself as both a person, and a member of his community.   

 

From a family of Indigenous changemakers and leaders, Quanah’s Mohawk roots and teachings have guided him on how to stand tall and proud of himself, his family and ancestors.  With a diverse friend group, Quanah has seen and experienced firsthand what strong allyship looks like, while being Indigenous, he has seen where it fails in people and systems.   

 

Starting at the University of Ottawa this fall, 18-year-old Quanah’s love for learning about different languages and cultures from around the world is reflected by his plan to study Linguistics and Music, as well as his dream of someday becoming a teacher.  This summer Quanah became part of the Three Things Consulting team and is supporting various projects and activities.   

Dan Gibson was born and raised out of Cambridge Ont. and is currently the Manager of RBC University of Guelph, OnCampus location. He has been with RBC for over 10 years, and has experienced a number of different roles within retail banking, eventually finding his interest in leadership with a focus on a community collaboration mindset. 

 

 Dan originally went to school to be a Fire Fighter but changed his career path as his family circumstance changed with the delivery of his first child. He is now a parent to 5 kids which includes triplets and he loves spending time with family and looking for adventure. 

 

By nature Dan is a “professional fun haver” and has a huge passion for helping others and making a positive impact within his community. He is an avid movie goer, blood donor and loves volunteering.

 

Additionally, some of his hobbies are photography, videography and social media content creation. Outside of Dan’s professional work, he runs a social network that focuses on his family and the experience of raising multiple children.  

Pytor Hodgson is the CEO of Three Things Consulting and been active since he was a teenager in a series of unorthodox and amazing projects.  Though his work has kept him busy over the past 25 + years and let him visit every province and territory multiple times – he continues to be of service to his relations and his communit(ties) regularly.  Whether he is offering his time and insights to a volunteer board of directors, dropping of meals to Elders during the pandemic or supporting someone on their path to sobriety, Pytor understand that services saves.  Not necessarily who is supporting, but himself and his spirt.   

 

Pytor has known 20 year old Jack Toner, since he was still in single digits, age wise, and has proudly watched as he became involved in community service at he was 12 years old.  His introduction was with helping shape and lead Y2K: Youth to Kingston Youth Strategy, which was adopted by the City of Kingston and 40 youth organizations, and he continues today giving back.   Now living in Toronto and working for a national youth servicing agency, at 20 years old, Jack still is committed to sharing. and working diligently to be a strong ally to others.   Jack and Pytor will share some of their shared experiences in being of service to others, while highlighting their own experiences.   

 

Conversational in nature, grab a tea and join Jack and Pytor for a discussion on why service matters, like really matters, not just to them: but all of us.  

 

Jennie is currently Branch Manager at RBC Kanata area, and joined RBC in 2014 as a Part time Client advisor. Throughout her last 7 year journey with RBC she has done various client centric roles including Account manager , senior Account manager and Assistant branch manager. She has completed her bachelor degree from the University of Saint John New Brunswick in 2016. Some fun facts about Jennie are that she loves getting out in nature and going for long drives, her favourite store is H&M, and she has an unhealthy obsession with the TV show Friends. 

 

Our Partners

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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.

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