Youth play an integral role in the international community’s effort of achieving sustainable development and gender equality. With about 1.8 billion young people worldwide between the ages of 10 and 24, actively engaging youth in decision-making processes enables cross-generational collaboration to truly implement Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 17 – inclusive partnerships that collectively seek solutions that benefit our society, the planet, and its inhabitants. Strengthening cross-generational collaboration entails providing mentorship and education of youth, as well as valuing young people’s opinions and creative solutions. More importantly, by further promoting youth participation and engagement, we are creating a momentum of fostering stewardship and sustainable development values amongst the future designers, politicians, engineers, and architects of the world. Investing in the next generation of young leaders will yield positive results – long term and short term – that contribute to the global integration of the SDGs and more robust climate and social justice actions.
Therefore, ICN is happy to accommodate seven selected youths from across Canada each representing their member councils to the CSW67. They attend CSW67 from March 6th – March 11th 2023.
Amanda Hendrie
Amanda (she/her) is a deaf and disabled woman who became motivated by the challenges of living with disabilities, moving her to work toward social change. Growing up in Nova Scotia, she witnessed the services being dependent on nonprofit organizations offering support that communities rely on, including her own. This realization led her to obtain an undergraduate degree in Public Policy Studies and a certificate in Nonprofit Leadership from Mount Saint Vincent University setting her on the direction of working in nonprofit communications.
Technology is a significant part of her life due to her having assistive devices to participate in education and employment. The awareness of how the intersectionality of women and gender-diverse and living with disabilities, the limitations of infrastructure, high costs, and inaccessibility of technology are barriers to full participation sparks her interest in the 67th session of the Commission on the Status of Women.
Mackenzie (Mick) Jefferies
Mick Jefferies is a third-year law student at the University of New Brunswick (UNB) and has completed a Bachelor of Philosophy in Interdisciplinary Leadership. Mick grew up in Charlottetown, Labrador (NunatuKavut) but has spent the past seven years in Fredericton, NB attending UNB.
Mick has devoted much of his life to advocacy and bringing awareness to matters that impact his community. He believes that community development and education is the key to removing bias, stigma, and discrimination against those considered vulnerable populations. Mick has experience working with community groups to offer cross-cultural, sexual violence prevention, and anti-racism training. Mick attempts to create positive impacts through Two-Eyed Seeing (Etuaptmumk) approaches, which merge Indigenous and Western knowledge and thinking.
In his spare time, you can catch Mick hiking the beautiful trails in Atlantic Canada or at a local coffee shop connecting with friends.
Magalie Lefebvre
Hey, my name is Magalie and I am biracial with a Haitian father and a Quebec mother. I recently completed a master’s thesis degree in sociology, specializing in feminism and gender studies, and I’m newly a sociology teacher at Cégep de Rivière-du-Loup (Québec). My epistemological approaches are rooted in mixed race studies, Black feminism, and critical race studies. I consider myself a spontaneous and epicurean of beauty in all its forms.
My experiences as an entrepreneur, adventure guide, and committed academic-activist, teacher, make me a multipotentialist.
In the last few years, I have been involved in several initiatives that all share the same interests: social justice and the analysis of power relationships. After working for six years in international cooperation, I was, for three years, the coordinator of a research collective on migration and racism at the University of Ottawa. At the same university, I was also an equity commissioner and facilitator of healing sessions for racialized people during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Attending the CSW67 delegation is a prestigious opportunity for me to reflect without boundaries on issues that impact socially marginalized groups daily. Voluntarily and actively bringing the voices of women and gender minorities back to the center is an empowering initiative that I greatly advocate for as a decolonial Afrofeminist.
Laura Perez-Gonzalez
As an impact-driven professional with experience in the international development sector, Laura is drawn to learning about policy advocacy efforts to foster inclusive solutions and contextual gender empowerment opportunities. She is most passionate about youth-driven development, formal and non-formal education, and gender transformative approaches to development. She has been privileged to support global education and gender projects and to lead research for over seven years with diverse communities, organizations, and institutions in the Caribbean, North America, East and West Africa, and Europe. As a published author, her research focuses on education, immigration, women’s empowerment, and their intersectionalities in the experiences of youth. She actively looks for opportunities to continue learning and to be engaged in community-led programming. She also enjoys learning about house plant care, travelling, and always welcomes suggestions to some of the best coffee shops!
Stephanie Halligan
Stephanie holds a Master of Business Administration from the Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) and a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and International Development Studies. She is passionate about gender equality and women empowerment and looks forward to using this opportunity to attend the 67th session on the Commission on the Status of Women to build on that passion and bring the knowledge back to her community to help others.
She is currently working in the field of community investment and has volunteered with organizations such as the Canada Volunteer Awards, Girl Guides of Canada and Manitoba Council for International Cooperation (MCIC).
In her spare time, Stephanie loves to cook, read and travel!
Mwila Munganama
Currently enrolled at the University of Regina, pursuing a degree in Human Justice, with a passion for social change and education, Mwila Munganama is a Zambian-born Canadian with a passion for social activism and education. As a Co-Director of Digital Marketing, Mwila is unequivocally passionate about communicating ideas through media and the creation of media content and wanting to learn more about media communications and design and has taken multiple opportunities to deliver valuables through media consultancy data analysis, website analytics comprehension, creativity and the ability to configure content to broaden an organization’s reach.
In her free time, Mwila takes as much time as possible, indulging in assisting the local community by being a part of organizations such as the University of Regina’s Plan’s Champions of Change and Black in Sask; and other local organizations that work to inform and improve the experiences of marginalized groups within the province. Her drive and passion for exploration and Justice has led her to this opportunity and she is excited to discuss her work and experiences as well as learn from at CSW67.
Priscilla Ojomu
Priscilla Ojomu is a Nigerian Canadian with big hair and dreams of tackling the big problems in the world. She is a fourth-year Bachelor of Arts student majoring in Psychology and minoring in Sociology at the University of Alberta. In March 2022, Priscilla was awarded the Michael Rawson Clark Award for Outstanding Student Leadership for her efforts to build a socially sustainable world and her strong demonstration of service to the UofA campus community. The themes of CSW67 align with Priscilla’s ongoing advocacy work in her communities, and she is thrilled to be an ICN Youth Delegate so she can gather diverse perspectives, expand her knowledge of international cooperation, and share her learning with other Canadian youth and the general public through my public engagement activity. Priscilla is most passionate about SDGs 5 & 16 and enthusiastic about growing with other youth and advancing gender equality through participation in CSW67!
