Workshops at PowerShift Canada

PowerShift Canada is a weekend-long youth conference on climate change taking place October 23-26, 2009, in Ottawa. It's modelled after the US PowerShift conferences. Over 1000 highschool and university students and other youth will assemble for hands-on workshops and lectures, and then a full day of lobbying action.

I attended the US PowerShift conference and it was a lot of fun and very inspiring. I'm doing a bit of work with the programming committee for PowerShift Canada. We're looking for speakers and facilitators to run workshops and give talks. Specifically, I'd like to ask you all for ideas on who to invite to speak on the following topics:

• A climate science backgrounder
• Climate modelling 101
• An insider's perspective on the IPCC
• Communicating the science of climate change
• Developing Canada's GHG inventory

I'm also working on fleshing out workshops on Health and Community, as well as more practical skills workshops (e.g. how to be involved in non-violent civil disobedience, how to facilitate a group meeting, how to cope with activist burn-out, etc.).

If you have any suggestions of potential speakers, if you'd like to speak yourself, or if you'd like to suggest workshop topics, send me email at jon.programming@powershiftcanada.org.