Youth Leadership Conference

On October 28th, 2008, the Oxford YOUth Matter Committee will be holding a Youth Leadership Conference for Approximately 150 Oxford County High School students. This forum is a follow up to the YOUth Matters Report from 2007. The purpose of the forum is to give youth a voice in the planning of activities and programs for their communites and to provide information to adults making decisions that affect their lives.

The benefits of the OYM Forum will be widespread, throughout the county and across stakeholder groups.

Youth will benefit from:

• Opportunities to influence change in their own Community
• A sense of emplowerment, achieved through contributing to the decisions that directly impact them
• A sense of belonging, through feeling heard and responded to by their community
• Opportunities to develop new skill in areas such as leadership, presentation, group facilitation, data compilation and report writing, marketing and internet communications
• Career exploration and counselling, as well as potential job opportunities; and
• Improved access to information regarding services that matter to them

The Community and County will benefit from:

• Information for use in the service delivery planning to address the service needs of all youth;
• An updated service inventory for use in referring youth to available services;
• Improved opportunities for service coordination and collaboration through service mapping and gap analysis and,
• Information for use in leveraging available funding.