Chantele Gouliquer wants to bring social change back to her community.
The Grade 12 student from Atikokan was one of about 110 students from the region taking part in Harmony Movement’s Social Changemakers Conference at the Victoria Inn Thursday.
The conference, run by the not-for-profit organization, brought together five school boards from the Northwest to have students learn and discuss topics like stereotyping and discrimination, identify, power and privilege and oppression.
“I find we’re all stuck in discriminating ways and different prejudices,” said Gouliquer. “It’s hard to try to break that social change in a small community, but I feel that it’s needed.”
In Atikokan, the teen feels there is discrimination against Aboriginal people and those from different socio-economic backgrounds.
“I feel the cliques need to be broken and everyone needs to start working more closely together,” she said, adding she’s worried that more youth hide who they really are or turn to drastic measures like suicide.
Now Gouliquer and the other students can bring back what they learned to their schools and their communities.
Lakehead Public Schools has an equity and inclusive education implementation network with eight boards in the region education officer Leslie Hynnes said the lessons the students learned during the conference can be used to build foundational values on what they can do to build a safe, free and inclusive community.
“It helps students to think critically about issues our community faces and so how that helps them in the future to be part of a more positive community, which is our eventual goal,” said Hynnes.
“Those students will go back to their schools and engage in projects within a social justice nature.”
Some of the issues discussed need to be explicitly explained to youth, said Hynnes, adding some students weren’t sure why they were attending the conference initially but they learned these are issues and trends that are seen in schools.
“We’re seeing them in the community and students need to learn how to appropriately mitigate and take a stand against inequity.
Conferences such as these ones give them the skills to do that and to rally others to look towards those same end goals,” she said.
