This year’s conference has been deliberate in promoting student-lead learning opportunities for all attendees. New students and those outside of traditional leadership positions and roles are encouraged to apply, and will be given preference when the organizing committee reviews applications.

Facilitator: Ty Smith
Over the last fourteen years, Ty Smith, Managing Director of TS Consulting, has worked within and with varying organizations and groups including shelters, AIDS service organizations, environmental groups, social service agencies, community centres and schools to address the intersecting issues facing diverse communities including homelessness, HIV stigma and discrimination, homophobia, transphobia, poverty, immigration status, gender power imbalance, and incarceration.

Move U Crew Morning Activity
The Move U Crew will get our morning started with a fun and interactive team activity around the principles of self-care!

Exploring Essential Skills for Queer Activists
In this working session, participants will identify a pressing issue requiring their collective activist energies. Then they will outline in broad strokes a plan to achieve their objective. The workshop will move back and forth between the skills contributed by individual activists and the essential role of these skills in collective action for progressive social change. Applying activist skills is surprisingly practical and straightforward, yet the difference activists can make is often queerly amazingly.

Facilitators: Jordan Bond-Gorr & Glenn Betteridge
Jordan and Glenn are queer social activists, members of the AIDS Action Now! steering committee, and gay lovers.

Contradictions and Reconciliation
In this workshop, student leaders will engage in a guided conversation to explore their values and experiences in aims of fostering greater connection between them and members of their community. Participants will reflect on what their values are, how they have may be at times in contradiction with a situation and share ways of reconciliation. The goal is to explore the stories of each person in order to get to a greater sense of confidence to lead with pride.

Facilitator: Asim Ashraf
Asim Ashraf has worked in the Office of Student at the University of Toronto, St. George campus, for over 5 years. He primarily works with student leaders of various campus organizations. Asim connects student leaders to resources, programs and services to ensure capacity building of their groups. In particular with the Ulead leadership development program. Asim is pursuing his Master’s in Education in Higher Education at OISE. In addition, Asim facilitates support group sessions for queer Muslims of the Greater Toronto Area for Salaam Canada.

Great Meeting Facilitation
Facilitation is an essential skill for any leader or organizer. Productive meetings and vibrant discussions ensure that our energy goes into working together to achieve our goals or finishing our projects and not into just wasting time or talking in circles. This workshop will include preparation techniques (including ones for people who are introverted/shy or who don't love public speaking), creating and holding the right space for the right type of gathering, choosing appropriate language, managing collaborative conversation, and handling conflict.

Facilitator: Laura Krahn
Laura Krahn is an experienced facilitator of community meetings, committee meetings, and discussion groups. She has facilitated activities for the Toronto Dyke March, The Collective at The Centre for Women and Trans People at U of T, and an on-going dyke discussion group.

Leading from the Inside Out
What is leadership? Leadership potential exists uniquely in everyone. The perspectives we gain from personal experience can shape our definition of leadership and how we live it. In this workshop we will have the opportunity to explore leadership, identify our personal leadership styles and how we can use them most effectively.

Facilitators: Tahia Khan & Kristina Minella
Kristina Minella creates and delivers leadership development workshops and learning opportunitities for students. She is passionate about active and responsible citizenship as well as community development. Kristina received a Masters Degree in Theory and Policy Studies from OISE/UT and is a member of the Ontario College of Teachers. Currently Kristina works with the Leaders of Tormorrow Team at U of T.

Tahia Khan is a second year student studying Electrical and Computer Engineering. She is currently a Co-President of LGBTQ & Allies in Science and Engineering and works with Engineering Leaders of Tomorrow. Tahia spends most of her free time programming but occasionally leaves her computer to co-facilitate presentations.

Queerphobia Outside the Classroom for LGBTQ Students
How do we decide when to speak and when to be silent? What does queerphobia look like on campus and in different contexts and spaces such as the gym or outside the classroom? We will be looking to explore these questions and others in this interactive session on how we engage with queerphobia. Personal experiences and strategies are welcomed and encouraged!

Facilitator: Christine Hsu
Christine Hsu is currently in her final year studying Physical Education & Health at the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education (FKPE) and is also in the Concurrent Teaching Education Program at OISE. She sits on the Physical & Health Education Undergraduate Association as Vice President of Equity. She was involved throughout her university career as LGBTOUT Athletics Director, an executive and session facilitator for past Lead with Pride symposium, and have had extensive experience working in putting together leadership programming for FKPE and students. She is also a 2nd year don/residence adviser at New College Residence.

Questions for Student Leaders and Self Care
In this discussion-based session, we will address some of the difficult questions and scenarios faced by leaders in LGBTQA communities.  We will explore how these questions are asked and the options individuals have in responding.  Acknowledging the mental and emotional impact of being "experts" on LGBTQ issues, this session will also focus on how to practice self-care in sometimes hostile environments.

Facilitators: Anna Penner & David Udayasekaran
David and Anna work with Teens Educating and Confronting Homophobia (T.E.A.C.H.) and the Queering Sex Ed project at Planned Parenthood Toronto.  In T.E.A.C.H. we train youth between the ages of 16 and 23 to provide peer-led anti-homophobia workshops.  Queering Sex Ed is a new project of Planned Parenthood Toronto, in which we are guiding a youth advisory committee to create a sexual education resource for LGBTQ youth.

For over ten years, David and I have worked and volunteered in Toronto's diverse LGBTQ communities, with a particular focus on supporting LGBTQ and allied youth.   We are experienced facilitators who have presented at conferences for youth and service providers across the province, with a particular focus on anti-oppression and anti-homophobia education.

Blurring Binaries: Queer/Trans People of Colour and Closets
This participatory workshop will take a critical look at the relationships between queer/trans people of colour and closets - which closets, who made them, why they exist, if exiting is the ultimate goal, and how to blur the rigid boundaries. Please note: this workshop is a Queer/Trans People of Colour only space.

Facilitators: Berkha Gupta and Anu Radha Verma
Berkha Gupta identifies as a South Asian genderqueer working for an AIDS service organization in Peel while attending UTM. They are interested in creating spaces for qtpoc youth to engage in dialogues around identity, intersectionality, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and other forms of oppression.

Anu Radha Verma (arv) is a queer diasporic sometimes-femme who works in the non-profit industrial complex. arv facilitates workshops, organizes events, writes, and works from a social justice framework informed by anti-racism, queer and trans positivity, and health equity.

Right to Dance: Movement and Dance Education
Right to Dance is a program that has regular drop-in classes and a 2 month intensive. We aim to empower LGBTTIQQ2S youth by offering classes for any level participant with a focus for youth of colour and youth of various class backgrounds, body types, and abilities, working with the principle that everyone can dance. During this workshop you will hear a bit about why and how Right to Dance started as well as be led through some movement; a warm-up, some conditioning and some movement. Come as you are and wear whatever makes you feel comfortable to move.

Facilitators: ILL NANA/DiverseCity Dance Company
Ill Nana is a queer positive multiracial dance company that embraces difference as strength, combats oppressive power structures by expressing their voices through dance, and operates from the grassroots as a collective through consensus. They are committed to representing LGBTTIQQ2S people, people of colour, people with varying body types, class backgrounds, and abilities on stage and in media, as well as providing accessible dance education to these communities. Utilizing both classical dance techniques and urban dance forms of Hip Hop, Ballet, Jazz, House, Vogue, Step, Latin, Contemporary, Modern, Wushu Kung Fu, and Dancing in Heels, ILL NANA creates dance works with a style all their own. These performers are fearlessly out and proud, sexy, masculine, feminine, and all that is in between, representing the super queeroe’s and real humans in all of us.