Students from Pearson College and hundreds of guests from the local community and online put their heads together recently during a TEDx event hosted at the school in Metchosin.
Lead organizer, Pearson student Stefan Petrevski, said those in attendance were on the edge of their seats from the beginning.
“They were excited to hear talks on everything from AIDS to lemonade making, and to exchange ideas and to network with people from more than 70 countries and every province and territory in Canada,” he said.
Petrevski, a second-year student originally from Macedonia, worked with a dedicated team of peers to organize the second-ever TEDx youth event at Pearson.
More than 100 people in the auditorium were joined virtually by more than 600 people, with some from as close as down the road in Metchosin to others as far away as Tanzania and Poland.
From its inception, Pearson students aimed to make TEDx a community event by inviting young leaders from schools across the Capital Region to make presentation or simply attend.
Victoria’s youth poet laureate, Ann-Bernice Thomas, spoke about the “Oreo complex” and racism while reminding everyone that they are “whirlwinds” whose identities cannot be boiled down to a food item.
M.J. Milloy, a Pearson alumnus who is now a researcher at the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, spoke of the steps to eradicate the disease in B.C. and around the world.
Pearson student Yousra Alfarra from Gaza, Palestine, discussed how to make lemonade out of the adversity that life deals, whether the lemons are wars, political sanctions or family struggles.
“Between the laughter and the emails and texts exchanged over the breaks, between the mind-opening talks and the engaging conversations that followed, I think it’s safe to say that we’ve achieved everything that we hoped for, and more,” Petrevski noted. “Our two primary aims, to connect with ambitious students from the region and to stimulate everyone in the room and online to consider small-scale ideas and extrapolate them to greater causes, were certainly met.”
Pearson College plans to make the talks available on its social media channels in the coming weeks.
Check out pearsoncollege.ca for more information.
– submitted by Brian Geary
editor@goldstreamgazette.com