Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, today I rise to tell Members about the second annual dreamcatcher aboriginal youth conference held in Edmonton the weekend of November 18 to November 20. Dreamcatchers was started last year by some very dedicated aboriginal students enrolled in Grant McEwan College.
Last year's conference was designed as a forum for the students and faculty of the young and youth care programs to encourage aboriginal students to consider a career in this worthwhile field. Madam Speaker, as usual with great ideas, the concept has snowballed. The response to last year's conference was overwhelmingly positive so that people kept coming up with more and more ideas to incorporate into this year's conference.
The dreamcatchers aboriginal youth conference still encourages young aboriginal students to take up careers in youth and child care. There will be presentations by people in the field of child and youth care who will show students what a rewarding career working for their people could be. But, through the positive feedback that I spoke of earlier, the dreamcatchers conference has become much more than a forum for youth and child care programs at Grant McEwan Community College. It has become a conference for the aboriginal youth of Canada, a conference where they can learn about their own culture and how to incorporate their culture into the Euro-Canadian mainstream without losing sight of their own unique heritage.
Madam Speaker, last year participants, both educators and aboriginal students alike, left the conference feeling recharged, full of new ideas of ways to help people in their own communities. Madam Speaker, I am proud to say that a group of 15 grade 10 students from Deh Gah secondary school in Fort Providence, after starting over $800 in debt, have worked very hard to raise the money to attend this very worthwhile aboriginal youth conference.
However, as usual in the smaller communities, they have come up a little short in their fund-raising. I have sent letters to some of the honourable Ministers across...