Gathering Our Voices is an annual youth conference. It's been running since 2004. The first time I attended was in 2006 in Prince George. I didn't know it was Gathering Our Voices at that time. I just thought I was at a conference with a bunch of youth. At this time, there were probably about 350 attendees. A couple of years ago, when we were in Vancouver, we had a 2,500-delegate registration.
We are in Kelowna this year, in March. It's a smaller venue, and we've had to cut our registration down to 1,000 to accommodate for the size of the conference centre.
Gathering Our Voices is a conference that brings individuals from across B.C. It started in B.C., and it's been opened up into a national conference with national delegates attending. The youth come and sign up for workshops that cater to their wants, aspirations, and needs. They are able to meet like-minded youth who are also registering for these workshops. The workshops range from education to sports, physical fitness, art, and rap dance. It runs over three days.
We have an honouring feast for youth in care. One of the things we have identified is that a lot of times youth in care who are from first nations backgrounds don't have that access to the cultural component of their heritage. This is our way of recognizing, again, “You are a person; you matter.”