This video takes you behind the scenes of Impact! The Co-operators Youth Conference for Sustainability Leadership. See for yourself the philosophy, energy and commitment that fuels  the event that gathered 180 young Canadians from 50 universities and 10 colleges nationally. With excerpts from David Suzuki’s frank and inspiring key-note address to interviews with participants and tons of beautiful conference images and insights, this brief video gives you a real sense of what excited, inspired and equipped these young people to be catalysts for change.

David Suzuki himself wrote: “It was a wonderful event and I really am blown away. All my thanks and best wishes for the follow up with these youngsters. I have great hopes for them and if I helped in some small way, I am delighted.”

Take a moment now to add inspiration to your day.

Co-operators Group President and CEO Kathy Bardswick, maintained the theme in her final address to the group. She emphasized the importance of bringing the student’s great ideas to fruition. Referring to the Impact! Fund she said, “there is assistance for you, and some of those funds might serve as gathering points along the way, but only you will do the heavy lifting.” She encouraged the students to take the partners up on their offers of post-conference support adding “they are offered in a genuine spirit of commitment and collaboration”. On a final note she told the participants: “I want to share with you how privileged we are to have experienced you. We want to continue to experience you. And the world needs to continue to experience you.”

Bob Willard – The Secret Benefit of Sustainable Strategies: Employee Engagement  

During the Q&A session, Bob, a noted author on sustainability issues, graciously invited students to obtain a copy of his e-book: The Sustainability Champion’s Guidebook which outlines the transformational steps to take,tips and techniques to use, and derailers to avoid. Students will be contacted directly with information on how to take advantage of this opportunity.

Nancy Neamtan – Community Engagement: Beyond Charity  

Peter Schiefke – Climate Change – The Challenge Of Our Generation  

Farouk Jiwa – Tackling Global Poverty:
The Emerging Convergence of Development & Business   

Length: 1 Hour and 21 Minutes

In pairs, the delegates then talked about their vision for a sustainable future and challenged each other to identify one concrete personal action they could take to effect positive change. Participants inscribed their personal action on an ‘I will’ postcard which will be mailed back to the conference organisers once the action is completed.

Anouk kicked off the final portion of the exercise by announcing that she “will jog the 6km to work this winter instead of driving”. With that, she placed a block on the stage to serve as cornerstone for a large tower. She invited others in the room to announce their action and, in turn, add a block to the tower. The building exercise brought full-circle the toppling of a similar tower during the opening remarks on Thursday night. In that instance, blocks were removed to an existing tower each time someone named a sustainability issue. Eventually, the tower was unsound and crumbled. Now, by committing to a personal act to benefit sustainability, they were rebuilding what had been broken.

Check in with us again soon to view posts identifying some of the commitments.

Candidly, he told stories of perseverance, hard work, trying, planning, failing and trying again. “For every project that has succeeded,” he said “many others have failed. Sometimes they have failed spectacularly,” he admitted. He provided leads on how to garner support for an idea, how to secure funding and how to overcome objections. He encouraged participants to dare take “a shot in the dark” when approaching big name speakers and shared this advice for young leaders:

• Share ownership of your idea. When people share ownership they fight to accomplish the objective.
• Make your idea public as soon as possible. Collaborators will come forward to help and support.
• Have a keen ability to adapt.
• Be vigilant and aware that we are part of a movement to which many people are opposed.
• Understand that your projects will take time, maybe years to properly implement. Be prepared to give it the time and effort necessary to implement it properly.
• Remember what you have learned and who you have met. “Your best resource going forward are the people sitting next to you.”

In closing, he encouraged all present to tape to their desks this quote from Winston Churchill: “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” Explaining further, Peter said: “You may experience roadblocks and hurdles along the way but the important things are worth fighting for.”

In the Q& A session, Peter said, “this conference is nothing short of incredible and I was blown away by the level of discussion.” He added, “The 200 people here today are the best resource I have ever seen at a conference” and proceeded to invite the students to apply to become Climate Project Canada Trainees and to stay in touch with him personally.

Wendy Carruthers of The Co-operators Group was the first partner to outline opportunities for the students. She pointed out how the co-operative has been more than a fundor for Impact! The Co-operators Youth Conference for Sustainability Leadership. The organisation’s deep committed to sustainability extends beyond its own operations and led The Co-operators to  join with conference partners not only to fund, but to imagine from concept to execution. In addition to its own sustainability initiatives and the leadership on this conference, Wendy announced that The Co-operators Board of Directors approved a $50,000 Impact ! fund to implement some of the ideas generated at the conference. Not surprisingly, this was very warmly received.

Chad Park and Anouk Bertner encouraged the students to find case studies on their web-site, continue to use their on-line learning course, review job & internship postings and partner with them to develop an Emerging Leaders program where students learn about  The Natural Step framework and apply them with local businesses.

The Network for Business Sustainability also had much to offer the participants post-conference. In addition to creating a report on the students’ ideas to share with organizations, they also encouraged the students to join the Network to connect with experts, job opportunities and the latest business sustainability research. The Network’s web-site is a one-stop-shop for emerging sustainability research in a user-friendly format.

AIESEC, the youth voice on the Steering Committee, was ably described by Brett Harding.  He outlined the many leadership & international internship opportunities available through the organisation.

“Nancy Neamtan and David Suzuki both alluded to the need to change how we engage with the economy…the current model is broken and the co-operative model answers many of those needs” said Roger Herman of the  Centre for the Study of Co-operatives. He encouraged students to consider post-graduate studies on co-operatives at the centre where funding is available for research projects and internships; to think about co-opeartives as an organisational model for achieving the ojectives they have in mind; and to take advantage of funding programs to support co-op development such as the federal governments Co-operative Development Initiative.

Akua Schatz of the David Suzuki Foundation underscored the Foundation’s focus on ”motivating the motivated to motivate others.” She invited youth from all disciplines – from graphic arts to science  – to volunteer. She invited participants to watch for DSF training opportunities and opened the door for participants to use the David Suzuki Foundation as an amplifier to publicise and showcase their community initiatives and leadership.

Laurie Schnarr of the University of Guelph thanked the participants for inspiring her to enahnce some of the sustainability inititatives on the already extremely progressive U of G campus. She invited any participants undertaking student-life related intiatives to contact her for assistance.

The pre-conference research, the conference itself and now the opportunities extending beyond our time together will serve to assist the particpants to be catalysts for change.

Students used various mediums to present their innovations including videos, skits, Powerpoint presentations and many had already connected to social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter to get others engaged and to make their work more widely available.  Students called on each other to utilize their networks, to work in their own communities, to follow up with the experts and academics they had met during the conference as well as conference organizers to be partners for future endeavors.

Before closing the session, the students gave their academic facilitators a standing ovation for their guidance and assistance over the past two days.

Tom Ewart, from the Network for Business Sustainability began his workshop on Ethical Consumerism by asking the students some tough questions, such as how do we redesign our destructive consumerism patterns? The students responded with passionate vigour and exposed their unique perspectives and ideas for change … now! According to Shannon Thibault, from Saint Mary’s University, NS, “education and awareness can play a valuable role in changing consumer habits for the long run.” Other ideas included limit packaging, buy in bulk and increase life expectancy of products. The second half of the workshop was spent doing a product-redesign activity which yielded more great ideas such as using a life cycle analysis to pin point opportunities for both consumer and companies to make huge savings in energy expenditures!  Buy used clothing and rent infrequently used items instead of purchasing and tossing!

Tove Malmqvist from GlobeScan explored Analyzing Public Trends to Create Action Plans. Tove took the group through recent and very interesting data on climate change. The numbers show that the environment has dropped as a top-of-mind issue for Canadians while the economy has risen.  They show that Canadians are holding companies less and less responsible for issues such as employee treatment, environmental protection and a host of other practices.  The group spent time analyzing these trends, thinking about how the questions should be formulated to not mislead interviewees and questioning the very basis of the research as it can be interpreted in many different ways depending on the aim of the person using it.

Françoise Morisette led two interactive group sessions with Impact students on the importance of their leadership style and how it can help to create change in our world.  Drawing on implications from her recent best-selling book, Made in Canada Leadership, Françoise emphasized the importance of leadership in order for Canada to remain an influential nation on the global stage.  Leadership, she says, “changes the world and changes people” – it enhances our ability to innovate.  Students participated in a brainstorming activity that challenged them to think about how they will influence the systems they wish to change and what strategies they will employ to do so.  Françoise concluded with this: “Tomorrow, you will step into the leadership vacuum when you create ideas and work on projects that will make impact.  But as you move forward with your projects, don’t just think of the project itself, think of how you will link and integrate it in other systems.”

With some tips from Eli and Akua of the David Suzuki Foundation the students in the “Online activism and social networking (4 Change)” session brainstormed different initiatives to use online tools to raise awareness about the need for action on climate change leading up to the upcoming global meetings in Copenhagen.   Eli stressed that the key is to use various tools to achieve real-world action – like the Global Wake-up Call earlier this month. The keys to effectively doing so: focus on real-world action; build on people’s tribal nature; make only one “ask”; match the tool with the action; and, don’t be partisan.

Tim Coates from 21inc. discussed how to take an idea or “innovation” forward and to develop support for that idea. We talked about building networks (operational, personal, and strategic) to lead towards your goal. Tim had the group think about their own projects and about how they were doing in regard to each of these various networks. He left us with the final reminder of the importance to think broadly about how goals can be achieved, that being patient is very often required, and how to remember that others may know things about your ideas that you might think.
Dominique O’Rourke of Accolade Communications led a lively session on government and media relations. She had the group differentiate between these two strategies and to discuss how to approach either. We will never forget those “O’Rourkeisms” — “establish your position”  “frame your message”, be “Clip-able” and to take charge of interviews when working with media. Regarding government relations, we talked about how to get access to the right people and how to frame your goal to suit government, thus making it a win-win relationship.
Not surprisingly, some of the same take-away messages appeared in many of the sessions and reminded us once again how issues are so often inter-related and impossible to separate or address in isolation.