2025 National Gathering and Youth Leadership Symposium

The Indigenous Programs team hosted its annual National Gathering and Youth Leadership Symposium (NG/YLS) in August! For five days, over 70 youth, mentors, supervisors, and chaperones from partner communities came together on the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus. There were performance play sessions with the Painted Turtle Arts Camp, and specialized trainings focused on play-based learning, goal-setting and creative expression. Guests from the Center for Healing and Justice through Sport in collaboration with the Nike N7 Fund and the LEGO company’s learning-through-play initiative came to campus to lead workshops. The whole group even made its way downtown to the Maple Leaf Sport and Entertainment’s (MLSE) LaunchPad for a morning of skill-building through basketball training!

Attendees developed new capacities, played all sorts of games, and built friendships that now reach across hundreds of kilometers. Of course, there was plenty of evening karaoke and self-serve soft serve ice cream to keep things going along the way. It’s hard work, building a future together—but it can be a lot of fun, too!