GVAD Wants YOUth!

The Youth Program will strive towards providing programs that meet one or all of our goals. Keep an eye on the GVAD website, and see what we're up to now and in the future! In fact, we have created a proposal for an exciting program that we want to implement in the spring of 2011: a Deaf Youth Leadership Course!

The Greater Vancouver Association of the Deaf (GVAD) will provide a leadership course for 10 Deaf individuals between the ages of 16 and 25 in British Columbia. The course will be comprised of once-monthly weekend workshops, beginning in May 2011and ending April 2012, for a total of 12 workshops. The completion of this course will lead to an official GVAD board-approved Deaf Youth Leadership Certificate.

The workshops will be led by qualified Deaf professionals from throughout British Columbia and Canada. The workshops will cover a variety of educational and practical topics including: organizational leadership, parliamentary procedure, public speaking, group discussion, fundraising tactics, job-seeking skills, Deaf rights and activism, as well as Deaf culture and community issues from a local to a global level. In addition to attending the workshops, three other requisites for certification are: first, forty (40) hours of community service, 20 of which must be within the Deaf community (10 at the GVAD Corn Party in August 2010, and 10 elsewhere); second, the completion and presentation of an individual project of the student’s choosing; and third, participation in a student-collaborated fundraiser.

If you like what you’ve read above, go to our Contact page and ask for more information. Also if you would like to donate towards our program and this exciting endeavor we are about to take on, please go to the home page and click on the Canadahelps.org link!