Youth symposium draws 200-plus

More than 200 teenagers and young adults gathered Friday at Save the Seed Energy Centre in Duffs Bottom for a youth symposium that included sessions about health, spirituality and mental growth.

Arliene Penn, who organised the event along with WIN BVI, said the inspiration for the symposium came from her own experience surviving cervical cancer and her work in raising awareness about the importance of early detection of the disease.

“Every year, I make sure I work with the women so that we can get free pap smears done,” Ms. Penn told the Beacon. “And the more I listen to them, the more I realise that I had to go deeper, deeper and deeper. And just this year I wanted to go just a bit deeper because I asked myself the question, ‘What if I had made good decisions in my life? Perhaps I would not have ended up with cervical cancer.’”

But she wanted her message to be framed around positivity rather than negativity.

“Instead of … telling the young people, ‘Don’t, don’t, don’t,’ why not talk to them about what they should do?” Ms. Penn said. “Because I said to myself, ‘Arliene, what would the younger version of you want?’ And the younger version of me would have wanted different people to tell me, ‘Arliene, you know, look at your heart, your mind, your body, your soul.”

She added that this approach ties closely with Christian values.

Affirmations

On Friday, the walls of the room were covered in posters with affirmations such as “I am enough” and “I am capable.”

Ms. Penn said including these posters was deliberate.

“They will say to themselves when a bad situation comes up, ‘I know me; I understand me; I love me; I respect me; I know me; I appreciate me.’ Because these are the things that they need to hear,” she said. “Not ‘you’re not, you’re not, you’re not.’ But instead, they would use the positive affirmations to become the best version of themselves.”

She added that such messaging was central to the symposium’s goal.

“That’s what this is about: walking away with the positive language not just in your mind but in your heart — because, you see, the heart is what helps to fuel everything,” she said.

The day featured sessions on topics including physical health, communication and mental health.

Keynote speaker Emeline King, who was the first black woman to design cars for Ford Motor Company, also delivered a motivational speech.

“It was about inspiring them to be different, inspiring them to do more,” Ms. Penn said.

Breakout session

The day ended with a breakout session where the participants were separated by gender.

Ms. Penn said this segment was designed to bring together the lessons learned throughout the day.

“They need to walk away from here with something tangible so that when they go back into their respective schools, into their respective communities, they can make a difference,” she said.

As students were filing out of the building after the event, Bregado Flax Educational Centre student Jostyn Balbosa told the Beacon that he found the day to be “beautiful.”

“It was nice, and I learned a lot,” he said, adding that he particularly enjoyed the discussions about mental health, self-care and Christian values.