This weekend the Youth Project will be hosting Making Waves, a conference all about gay-straight alliances (GSA). The conference will include various workshops, as well as a presentation by keynote speaker Ivan Coyote (see yesterday's story about Coyote here). The event is free and open to staff and students across Nova Scotia.

Leighann Wichman, the executive director at the Youth Project, spoke with Down East about the event.

What will happen there?

The conference is an opportunity for students and staff who are in GSAs or want to start GSAs to get together, learn and share. There will be opportunities for skill building and networking. Many rural schools have few chances to connect with other schools. Our keynote speaker is Canadian storyteller Ivan Coyote. In the afternoon we have a series of workshops; some for students and some for advisors, which include the role of the teacher’s union, starting a GSA, GSAs in rural communities, making your GSA more trans friendly, and many more. Ivan Coyote will be offering a writing workshop and there will also be a filmmaking workshop.

What will the youth involved learn and experience? Hopefully, the students will learn more about making their GSAs stronger through leadership, inclusion and some new and exciting project and event ideas. It is also hoped that students will feel connected to a much larger movement in Nova Scotia that includes all GSAs. We want to create a stronger voice for GSAs and provide opportunities for youth to use that voice.

How did Ivan Coyote get involved? Our GSA conference planning committee spent a lot of time discussing who they wanted as a keynote speaker. Ivan had been at the Youth Project in the past so was already a popular choice. We learned that Ivan was going to be in Nova Scotia around the time of the conference, so it seemed a perfect fit. It is also exciting to represent gender identity so strongly, as it often isn’t so prominent a topic.

What do you want the youth to get out of the weekend?

We want you to feel part of something bigger. We want them to have the opportunity to share and learn from their peers around the province and be able to connect with them after the conference. We want them to have the confidence, skills and knowledge to be strong leaders in their schools and communities and be prominent in the act of making schools safer, healthier and happier for all students, especially LGBTQ students and their allies.

For more information, check out Making Waves' website.

It got to a point that I honestly thought Ivan Coyote was living in Halifax. I kept on hearing about Ivan doing readings here and there, her name popping up so often I thought she had moved here. No such luck.

But Halifax is in luck because Coyote will be performing her distinctive blend of storytelling Thursday night at the Company House. Coyote is also in town as a guest speaker at this weekend’s Making Waves, a conference on gay-straight alliances put on by The Youth Project, an event that I will be covering tomorrow in this blog.

When asked about her involvement with this weekend’s upcoming events, Coyote said, “I love Halifax. I’ve always had great gigs here.” Coyote went on to discuss the GSA conference, saying, “I am hoping to spark pride in self, an interest in queer history and queer books, of course, in the youth, and hopefully to empower them to make their own contributions to queer art and documenting the stories of our lives. I want them to feel supported and valued, and I want them to take that energy back to their individual schools or learning environments and use it to help make schools safer and more respectful of diversity of all sorts.”

You can check out Ivan Coyote this Thursday at The Company House. You can buy tickets for the event at Venus Envy, at 422-0004.

For more information on Making Waves, the GSA conference happening this weekend, check out their website.