Students at the University of Toronto will be planning a fundraising conference for Bright Futures for Young Mothers this coming summer! With the support of the DCS Innovation Hub, the Bright Futures Conference will take place on Saturday, June 18th, from 10 am – 6 pm at the University of Toronto (St. George Campus), and aims to create brighter futures for women both locally and globally.

All proceeds will go towards our young mothers and infants in Tanzania, by funding healthcare kits that include infant care products such as diapers and formula, and every day essentials such as malaria pills, mosquito nets, personal hygiene items, and multivitamins. More information about our healthcare kits can be found here. These kits cost $175 each and they contain vital items to ensure the health of young mothers and their infants.

Local Action, Global Empowerment

The Bright Futures Conference aims to empower both locally and globally. Not only will we fundraise for women in Tanzania, but we will do so by offering women in Toronto a day of professional workshops and powerful ideas. The Conference consists of a series of workshops in tangible tools for professional development, as well as a moderated speakers’ panel exploring individual and collective empowerment, at both local and global scales.

Workshops: Tools for Empowerment

Hosted by local community leaders, the Bright Futures Workshops consist of the following:

• Leadership & Negotiation
• Front-End Development
• Business Technology (including Microsoft Excel)

Panel: What does “empowerment” mean?

A moderated panel of professionals, entrepreneurs, and community leaders will round off the Conference. Coming from diverse economic and cultural backgrounds, these speakers will discuss what “empowerment” means in terms of gender, technology, international development, and local/global scaling. How best can we enact change from a local standpoint? How impactful can our actions be? How can individual empowerment translate to collective empowerment?

More Information

We will be posting more updates about the conference as planning goes underway. Stay tuned for details!

If you would like to contact the organizers about this event or if you are interested in helping out, please send an email to the Co-Chairs of the conference: Maggie Cheung at magnolia.cheung [at] mail.utoronto.ca, or Janessa Duran at janessa.duran [at] mail.utoronto.ca.

 r