Dozens of District 57 students are in Vancouver for the youth-focused We Day celebrations today to help pack Rogers Centre under the banner of making a difference.
It's an "impactful" experience, said Cindy Smith, a College Heights Secondary School teacher who has been taking students for the last six years.
"It's the power and the energy of 20,000 students that are all on the same. Like-minded students wanting to make a difference in the world," said Smith.
Her leadership students Josh Nycholat and Jasneek Manhas, both 17, were excited about the opportunity, especially to get inspired by the roster of motivational speakers.
"I think it's a really good experience and opens you up to more ideas and more possibilities. It's good for us to go down there and get a different perspective," Nycholat said.
Manhas said she looks forward to "being around people who have the same ideas and aspirations as you do."
Speakers include a number of youth activists, the Kielburger brothers who founded the event, Canadian Olympians, astronaut Chris Hadfield and musicians including Hedley, the Barenaked Ladies and Kardinal Offishall.
The students travelled as a group Tuesday with three other local schools - Prince George Secondary, Kelly Road and DP Todd high schools - as well as Fraser Lake. Each school can take 22 students, Smith said.
"I feel like We Day is a great way to motivate the youth," Nycholat said. "I feel like it will just help us to make a difference on own rather than having the necessary support when you're younger. It's a good way to empower that."
Added Smith: "And a lot of them do, they don't just stop because a lot of my students that have left here are now volunteers in our community."
Both Nycholat and Manhas count volunteer work at the University Hospital of Northern B.C. and St. Vincent de Paul among their long list of outreach.
"Leadership has gotten me to open up my eyes (to) the impact we have to help people," said Manhas, who started volunteering at a local crisis line.
"There is a helping hand out there," she said. "You're not really alone and you have someone that you can always reach out to and that sometimes when you feel like you're at your most vulnerable, or scared ... but then being able to pick up the phone or send a message and being on the other side of the message to know that feeling and just be able to help out is really rewarding."
Smith said she'll do a debrief with her students when they come back to see if the day has inspired new projects.
"Sometimes it'll switch or change depending on who the speaker is," she said. "Their hearts are so full of giving at that moment."
One year, her class heard a child soldier speaker, which inspired a number of school projects, like a social injustice wall, a letter-writing campaign to support Canadian soldiers and discussion around the rights of a child.
Last year the talk was sustainability, which was in line with past fundraisers through the Prince George-based Northern Uganda Development Foundation, started by University of Northern B.C. professor Chris Opio.
"We have four wells and a bunch of goats," Smith said of student fundraising.
The day also gives local schools are reason to work together, Smith said.
"Where schools are usually competitive, we become collaborative and cooperative. we work on many projects together," she said, like raising $2,000 each for Cops for Cancer and Big Brothers Big Sisters over the years and sponsoring a school in Kenya.
"We work together."
