Closing ceremony for the Pan-Canadian conference tour

tournee.gifOn 4 February, ISW completed the pan-Canadian tour of conferences begun in November 2008 with the theme "Water, a source of solidarity among citizens: from local to global". This tour, mainly targeting young people aged between 17 to 30, visited 12 colleges in Quebec and 10 colleges and universities in the rest of Canada, from British Colombia to Newfoundland.

The conferences presented an overview of the issues relating to access to water and sanitation in developing countries and drew parallels with the situation in Canada, aiming to encourage the Canadian public to take part in actions locally and for international cooperation. The conferences included video clips made by young people from around the world in the framework of the Festival VidéEau, a contest organised by ISW since 2006. Following the presentation by ISW, a student from the region who had already participated in a local project or in an international cooperation project was invited to discuss their experience, in order to encourage their peers to get involved too.

The final conference of the tour was held at the Édouard-Montpetit College in Longueuil. The ISW presentation was followed by the screening of a video by Renaud Ligneault-Gagnon on a stage built in Nunavik by a group of students taking the Environment Challenge option.  The results of this tour were presented during the 5th World Water Forum in Istanbul (March 2009), in the form of the "Young Canadians' Message for Water" produced during a national contest. One of the students from the Édouard-Montpetit College was among the ISW delegation (two students from Quebec and one from Newfoundland) that went to the World Water Forum.
This tour was made possible thanks to the generous support of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and in collaboration with the Quebec Fund for Sustainable Development and the Government of Quebec.