National Skills Institute Planning Group

Tuesday October 15 2013

10am– 11am in BC; 11am – 12noon in AB; 12noon – 1pm in MB; 1pm – 2pm in ON and QC

Participating

Present: Rekha Gadhia, Saman Ahsan, Jeet Chand, Sonia Prevost-Derbecker, Jace Meyer, Samantha Cochrane, Beth Malcolm

Regrets: Brandi Pollock, Kristen Feduck, Tanyalee Viner, Maisha T

Agenda

Welcome and Introductions

Discussion

  1. Review timeline (see attached document)
  • A timeline was Included in the meeting package to provide a high level overview of the tasks that need to be accomplished leading up to the NSI
  • In the next month we need to send the survey to community groups and send a ‘save the date’ letter
  • The call for workshop proposals email will go out around November 20th but the nature of it will be informed by what we hear back from the survey of topics and issues from community organizations
  • The workshop proposals will be due back in 4 weeks by late December at which time a sub-committee of the Planning Group will review the proposals prior to January 8th.
  • Throughout January we will follow up with potential presenters and finalize the agenda
  • Registration will open up on January 13th and travel arrangements and follow up will happen in February and early March, avoiding the various March Breaks across the country
  • Hopefully the final participant list will be complete by the end of March
  • The Planning Group felt the timeline sounded well planned
  • Suggested that we identify a date to have the key note speakers finalized
  • Talked about involving young women through presenting workshops, ‘entertainment’ (music, spoken word), video clips or stories
  1. Review topic suggestionsfrom last month
  • Last month we talked about programming for the NSI and making it specific to girls, generating a list of issues or topics
  • When reviewing the list of topics from last month it seemed that there were four topics areas that came forward. These were:

-Media

-Violence

-Girls at-risk – Indigenous girls and girls in care

-Mental Health and well being

-Adult roles

  • These are not necessarily themes for the NSI but it was interesting that the topics identified could all be grouped together under these areas
  • Discussed concerns about the problems of identifying Indigenous girls as at risk and that we have to make sure they aren’t labeled in a negative way
  • Flagged that we need make sure talk about at-risk girls in all areas and don’t centre out Indigenous girls as the only at-risk girls
  1. Review draft survey
  • Survey will go out once all the changes discussed in this meeting are made, hopefully on October 18th
  • Will ask for survey back by November 8th – it is a short time but have found if people don’t do the survey within a few days of receiving it, they probably won’t do it so more time doesn’t necessarily translate in to a greater response
  • Will be distributed among community organizations on our database and asked Planning Group members to forward it to people in their networks
  • Reviewed survey and made changes to the survey based on Planning Group comments (revised survey has been sent)
  1. Call for workshop proposals
  • Only had time to discuss briefly
  • Call for workshop proposals will be developed once survey results are tabulated. It will be sent to Planning Group members about a week before our next call so we can discuss it during the call

Next Steps and Wrap up

  • Encouraged people to use the portal. We will post the agenda, minutes and material son the portal, but will continue to send it by email for now
  • Next meeting: Tuesday November 19th at 1pm ET