April 11 and 12: Student Conference features Eva Olsson and Rick Osborne

The 2011 Students Leading Students Conference being presented by the Rainbow District School Board Student Senate will feature two prominent keynote speakers – holocaust survivor Eva Olsson and gang expert Rick Osborne. The conference, which will bring together five students from each secondary school, will take place on Monday, April 11 and Tuesday, April 12, 2011 from 9 am to 2 pm at the Alumni Hall at Laurentian University.

Eva Olsson will speak on Monday, April 11, 2011 from 9:30 am to 11 am. The first day will also feature Gaston Cotnoir who will present the Classroom Closet.

Rick Osborne will speak on Tuesday, April 12, 2011 from 9:15 am to 10:15 am. The second day will also feature workshops, roundtable discussions and team building exercises. Students will work together to create goals for their respective school improvement plans.

The conference, entitled “Today’s Voices. Tomorrow’s Leaders! Pursue it, feel it, live it.”, will focus on perseverance.  “The goal of the conference is to nurture leadership skills in young people,” says Norm Blaseg, Director of Education for Rainbow District School Board. “Students play an important role in creating healthy school environments where all young people feel welcome and valued. This conference will inspire students to be good role models and make a difference.”

Director Blaseg commended Rainbow District School Board’s Student Senate for organizing and presenting this year’s Students Leading Students Conference, a key component of the Ministry of Education’s Student Success Initiative.

Chaired by Student Trustee Sloan Boyd of Sudbury Secondary School, the Student Senate provides a regular forum for students to come together to network and share ideas. The Student Senate includes Jillian Ashick-Stinson and Meerna Homayed of Lasalle Secondary School; Vanessa Di Feo, Conner McLean and Nishma Appanna of Lo-Ellen Park Secondary School; Rachel Maracle and Rebecca Ogbamichael of Manitoulin Secondary School; Veronica Charette and Katerina Villeneuve of Confederation Secondary School; Lyndsay Moggy and Sloan Boyd of Sudbury Secondary School; Taylor Scully and Stephanie Desjardins of Espanola High School; Chris MacCullough and Madeleine Orr of Lockerby Composite School; and Kenley Montgomery of Lively District Secondary School.

“Through this conference, secondary students from Rainbow Schools will come together to develop leadership skills in a fun and friendly setting,” said Sloan Boyd. “We will learn from each other and build on our creative energy to make our schools even greater places to be for all students. On behalf of the Student Senate, I would like to thank Rainbow District School Board for giving students a forum to share their ideas and let their voices be heard.”

About Eva Olsson:

The outbreak of World War II plunged Eva Olsson into the heart of the Holocaust concentration camps, slave labour factories, disease, and the deaths of millions, including most of her family. Eva’s PowerPoint presentation contains images from the Holocaust and pictures taken when she retraced her life in 2007, visiting her birthplace as well as three concentration camps. 

Eva Olsson uses the Holocaust and her experiences as a springboard to discuss key issues – the power of hate and the need to stop it wherever it occurs; the importance of not being a bystander when bad things are happening; the importance of having compassion and respect for ourselves and others; and the need for the education system to go beyond the three Rs and help students develop good character.

Eva Olsson was born on October 28, 1924 in Szatmar, Hungary (now Satu Mare, Romania), one of six children in a poor Hasidic family. On May 15, 1944, she and her family were taken away in boxcars to Auschwitz-Birkenau, part of what we now know as the Holocaust, Hitler’s attempt to exterminate all the Jews of Europe.

Eva’s autobiography Unlocking the Doors: A Woman’s Struggle Against Intolerance, published in 2001, describes her life before, during, and after these events. Her most recent book, Remembering Forever: A Journey of Darkness and Light was published in 2008 and recounts her journey back to her roots. Her life story is also the subject of a documentary.

Over the last 14 years, Eva has spoken to over one million people in schools, service clubs, and churches, on armed forces bases, and at police force conferences. She has also addressed conferences at Queen’s Park and the United Nations.

Increasingly, the focus of her message is bullying and the importance of not being a bystander to injustice. She uses her life experiences, primarily in the Holocaust, to illustrate the power of hate and the importance of standing up against forces of racism, bigotry, and intolerance.

Her message resonates deeply with a wide variety of audiences, as evidenced by the thousands of letters and emails she has received. In recognition of her work, Eva Olsson was awarded on honourary doctorate by Nipissing University in 2005. On January 24, 2008, she was inducted into the Order of Ontario, the province’s highest official honour. 

About Rick Osborne:

Rick Osborne is one of Canada’s leading gang experts and is Astwood Strategy Corporation’s Director of Mentorship as well as co-founder and director of Astwood’s Ozzy’s Garage program. The program was recently delivered in Sudbury through the Greater Sudbury Police Service.

Rick’s story has been well chronicled in the media and it is this story of redemption that allows him to speak with unmatched credibility and power with youth involved with gangs or at the margins of gang membership. As a teenager in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Rick was victimized by a group of heroin addicts who injected him, against his will, with a "speedball" containing methamphetamine and heroin.

This set him upon a course of drug addiction and in turn, street gang involvement, which ultimately led to his entrance as full patch member into one of the world’s largest and powerful "one-percenter" outlaw motorcycle clubs. As a result of his criminal activity, at age 21 and with Canada’s most wanted status, he entered the federal penitentiary system where he went on to spend 24.5 years of his life in prison across 33 different institutions from coast to coast.

In 1993, after breaking free from drug addictions, he began to reform his life and leave behind his gang affiliations, and was one of the few federal inmates in maximum security in Canadian history to earn a university degree (B.A., Psychology, Queens University) while incarcerated. After leaving prison a decade ago, he dedicated the rest of his life to talking to children and youth about the dangers of gangs, drugs and criminal activity.  

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Media Contact:

Nicole Charette, Senior Advisor,

Corporate Communications and Strategic Planning,

Rainbow District School Board, 705-674-3171, ext. 7217.