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- Student Council Journey at Britannia Secondary School
- Student Council Presidency- 2023 Britannia Secondary School
- Britannia Community Centre Journey(Vancouver Downtown Eastside)
- Grade 11 Representative- 2021-22Britannia Secondary School Student Council
- Youth Representative- 2022-23 Britannia Community Centre Board of Management
- Education Career >
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Sustainability Career
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- SOYL (Sustainability of Youth Leadership Program)- Fresh Roots Urban Farm Society
- Sustainability Coordinator- 2021-23 Strathcona Interact Club
- Youth to Sea Program, OceanWise Alumni
- President- 2019-23 Beyond the Plate
- EYA participant Environmental Youth Alliance
- Youth Head Delegate (YHD)- Vancouver School Board Sustainability Conference
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Advocating
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- Press & Media
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Achievements
- Certificates & Awards
- 2025 YWCA Young Women of Distinction Award For All of Metro Vancouver Nominee
- SFU Uggla Family Scholarship
- 2024 SFU Uggla Family Scholarship- Welcome Event
- Trevor Linden Community Spirit Scholarship Award
- Trevor Linden Community Spirit Scholarship Award: Canucks Fund Community 2023 Report
- Beedie Luminaries Scholarship Award
- Skills for Hope Scholarship
- Allan Ross Scholarship Award
- Student Council Award
- BC Superintendents Scholarship Award
- Britannia Class of’ 77 Scholarship
- Marathon Journey >
- Founder
SOYL, a Summer-long farming program from Fresh Roots, provided me direction when I was lost. I farmed across the Lower Mainland. Urban agriculture nurtured my heart and I felt community for the first time. We package hundreds of dinner meals for families during the pandemic and interacting with my community brought me joy. During those scorching hot days, I was 14 years old and finding myself with dirt all over my face. I had been weeding out this huge patch of land with my SOYL peers. In the afternoons we would harvest hundreds of fresh produce from radishes, cabbages, pea’s, herbs, squashes, processing garlic and so much more: to give out and sell to families at a low cost. With the veggies we harvested we learned to cook every week to make meals for each other. Food brought us all so much closer. They’re all my family friends now. Feeling the impact of what my SOYL community brought to our neighborhood, I returned as a mentor the next summer, teaching farming skills, and facilitating group activities. I remember my youth, Casidy, Joaquin and Jonah. Joaquin and Jonah had special needs. I recall that summer I spent countless hours after the program, learning how to support them better, learning their interests, and remembering sily characters.
This inspired me to start Beyond the Plate at Britannia Secondary School. I taught students how to farm, empowering them to plant, weed, harvest and cook the vegetables we grew. I wanted to share the positive impact sustainable urban agriculture had on me with others. I founded Beyond the Plate, a club at Britannia Secondary School which provides opportunities for students to learn about urban agriculture. A cooking and gardening club I started in 2020. Our main goal is to provide opportunities to students of Britannia to garden in the school yard beds and cook fresh produce from harvested local produce. We’re the only club that manages the garden beds at Britannia and hope to continue to do so! We have accomplished a range of things from bake sales, repairing all the garden beds in the Mary Joe gardens, cooking chinese foods, baking jam cookies and other cultural delicacies. As founder, I took the initiative to build this club from the ground up - being responsible for organizing meetings, facilitating workshops, and teaching students gardening and cooking skills (even learning a few skills myself). Through my leadership and mentoring students felt empowered to take on initiatives themselves and build the confidence to continue and grow the community of Beyond the Plate. I strive to spread awareness and teach about the importance of urban agriculture and “Farm to Table” through an uplifting environment. We're proud to spend the last four years maintaining the schoolyard beds and empower other students through community leadership.
I realized that it only took one person to uplift my community me: Since I was thirteen I’ve volunteered over 2200 hours with neighbourhood gardens and various organizations. This included the Environmental Youth Alliance working at Strathcona neighbourhood gardens, Strathcona park gardens and restoration work at Renfrew collingwoods with an emphasis on protecting and preserving indigenous plants native to the lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nation. In 2019 I had the honour of serving as Britannia Secondary School’s head delegate for the Vancouver school Board Sustainability Conference. Where I attended meetings to plan exciting yearly events, organize, inspire and collaborate with like minded individuals passionate about spreading the importance of Urban Agriculture within the school system. In September of 2021 I was elected as a sustainability coordinator at Strathcona Interact Club in Vancouver's Chinatown Downtown Eastside, serving from September 2021 to August 2023. Strathcona Interact Club organizes several campaigns to help impact change in our community. Interact clubs are self-governing and financially independent. As a sustainability coordinator, specific projects I led included organizing garden meet-ups, facilitating and leading hands-on gardening workshops on sustainability and urban agriculture, as well as leading the “adopt-a-plant” initiative for youth 6-18 years old. I assisted with Winter toy drives, breakfast with Santa volunteers, community garbage pickups, as well as developing and disseminating mental health packages, high school packages, and elderly packages that included supplies, resources and tools targeted directly to the community. My interest in sustainability extended to my curiosity of our vast oceans. Out of 400 applicants, I was selected to join the Youth to Sea cohort of 80 participants. Youth to Sea is an OceanWise Program with various locations across Canada. Throughout my involvement, I actively engaged in various activities, including shoreline cleanups, invasive plant removals, and outreach events, all aimed at promoting ocean conservation. Over the course of this commitment, I completed 240 hours of community service including hosting a large clothing swap event at Stanley Park. I found interest in finding solutions for fast fashion impacting climate change and contributing to rising ocean levels. I spent months emailing schools and organizations to support us, I collected old loved clothes from dozens of people, and won a grant of $500 to build the event. We provided food, snacks, a community and free clothes people came to swap with. Thank you to Ethan and Brittney, our Youth to Sea program directors, for guiding me through the process. With a deep-rooted commitment to ocean conservation, I proudly identify myself as an ocean conservationist, driven by a desire to protect our planet's precious marine ecosystems. After spending 9 months from June 2021 to March 2022 I am now a proud Alumni.
In my sustainability journey I had an epiphany that my passions in life were specifically working with people. After my mentorship at Fresh Roots I was offered a Teen Leader position at the Writers exchange from 2019-2024, an after-school literacy program that catered to at-risk youth in Vancouver. Even after three years, my gratitude and love for these kids grew. As a teen leader my heart never stops growing, my knowledge is ever expanding for the funny jokes and fidget toys. I learn something new every time I come to work. It could be about a new Pokémon or hearing a quiet kid talk for the first time, I’m in awe every time. Every year I hear the kids' vocabulary expand, they get better at writing, learn new jokes, quirks, hobbies and personality growth! I have the honour of being a part of their literary growth. The Writers Exchange is a nurturing environment where children and teens can enhance their reading and writing abilities while fostering a love for literacy. Having been a participant for years, I transitioned into a role as a Teen Leader, where I actively engaged with children, facilitated various activities, and provided individualized support, particularly for those with diverse needs. My responsibilities include assisting children ages 5-13 in literacy activities, and childcare development, ensuring cleanliness in premises, and effectively communicating with children regardless of their verbal or non-verbal communication styles.
In 2020, I ran for Britannia Secondary School Student Council grade 11 representative for my voice and advocate for others to be heard. I hosted covid information tables to spread awareness of the resources we have at school for mental health, low income student resources and community events. During my term, the Ukraine and Russia conflict intensified and I decided to fundraise money for the refugees fleeing Ukraine for the conflict. I spent the next three weeks fundraising by going to every class in our school every morning, bringing up awareness during the council meetings, speaking on the announcements and posting on social media and reading out news reports that were occurring that week to update everyone one the situation, I was able to collect $700 from kind faculty members, students and parents. During this term the conversation in regards to implementing SOGI (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) representation and Indigenous Representation voting processes came up for discussion. After a long bureaucratic conflict we were able to successfully vote for the first SOGI reps to exist on our constitution. This vote was extremely important as it was the first to lead the way for highschools across the Vancouver School Board to implement SOGI reps. Seeing change happen made all the countless nights of reviewing the constitution, protesting for our rights with school administration, the Teachers Union and with the support of the VSB all worth it. It was important to us to fight for change, to make a path for the future and it is now a precedent written in history from the countless news stations that reported and the TYEE that wrote an article explaining the situation. In 2023 I was elected student council President by our student population. During my time as Student Council President, my executive council and I ran weekly meetings and foster school spirit for the first time in six years. I promised and ran all the events I promoted such as halloween spirit week, haunted house, holiday spirit week, foyer games every month, organized the Terry Fox run for our entire school, spoke at every assembly, spoke and ran daily announcements, organized a large movie night, bakery decorating contest, fundraised for our student council, planned and supported all the council members on our year retreat, created education posters, decorated the school with decorations. Running spirit weeks encouraged school spirit and was an important way for us to create an accepting, welcoming and foster the Britannia way of Bravery, responsibility, Integrity and Tenacity. I remember this time for my perseverance, for my leadership and advocating for the rights of the council and student population. I often humorously remember this time as the countless hours I stayed back at Britannia Secondary School and would leave the school the same time the principal would. My work in the Britannia Community during this time extended to advocating in 2023 for those not heard as Youth Representative on my community centre’s Board of Management. As a youth representative and a board member, I represent and speak up for all youth in the Britannia Secondary at the Board of Management meeting every month, speaking up for youth at the Britannia Renewal Plan to trustees from the Vancouver School Board. The Britannia Renewal included tens of millions of dollars worth of new apartment buildings for low income families , elders and artists in our community. Additionally the Renewal Plan included the discussion of the new development of all our public facilities on site. We constantly collaborated with the City of Vancouver, the Vancouver Public Library, the Vancouver School board and other necessary avenues. I believe it’s important for youth to have a say in future facilities that directly affect them. I was one of the twelve on the board of management that weighed in on approvals for 7 million dollars of fiscal budgets for our community resources in all departments including our public swimming pool, our public ice rinks, teen centre, events, public library and various child care subsidy programs. Additionally the board of management has a sub committee that allows me to further educate for Anti-Racism initiatives within my community. Advocating and fostering an inclusive space, LGBTQIA2+, anti- racism and environmentalism within the community for all youth.
After attending SHAD Canada at York University, a S.T.E.A.M. Entrepreneur Program in the summer of 2021, I was inspired and co-founded Nurtured Youth Community to provide resources to youth across Canada experiencing unsupportive parental/ guardian relationships, providing mental health packages, therapy bursaries, and more. This is what I needed and I’m proud to provide support opportunities to youth like me. It is most important to me to continue to remove barriers youth face in achieving their dreams. Recently artificially featured on the CBC News, Nurtured Youth Community was a winner of the $5000 Oxy Canada grant this year, allowing us to host free therapy workshops and we recently launched the ambassador program to inspire other youth across Canada to advocate for free healthcare. My goal for Nurtured Youth Community is to provide positive opportunities for kids affected by homelessness, drug abuse, poverty, food insecurity; all barriers I faced as a low-income youth.
After graduating at Britannia Secondary School, I was honoured to be the recipient of 8 scholarships, including the SFU Uggla Family Scholarship, Beedie Luminaries Scholarship Award, Canucks Trevor Linden Community Spirit Scholarship Award, BC Superintendents Scholarship Award, Skills for Hope Foundation Scholarship, Allan Ross Scholarship Award, Britannia Class of 77’ Scholarship and Student Council Scholarship Award. After graduation in 2023, I said goodbye to working at the Writers Exchange for the past four years and I was promoted to a role at Fresh Roots as Market Assistant. As a market assistant I stepped into the role of mentoring over 35 youth at the SOYL Program on how to farm, organize and sell produce markets across multiple cities. The locations included Vancouver's Italian Cultural Centre, Joyce Renfrew Collingwood Community Centre markets, and Coquitlams Suwalk elementary school markets. My role included farming on school yard farms every week at Vancouver Technical School and David Thompson farm sites. It was an incredible opportunity to step into a new role at Fresh Roots as a staff and use my urban agriculture experience accumulated in the last five years. We sold thousands of dollars worth of produce to fund our charity initiatives such as Lunch Lab, an affordable and nutritious food program at Grandview Elementary school, the CAS program which supported hundreds of families with organic produce each week and the SOYL program in the Vancouver and Coquitlam cohorts. Excitingly after starting school at Simon Fraser University as one of the ten in 2023, full ride Uggla Family Scholars I was offered a position at Pathways to Education by the inner city organization Pacific Community Centre. As Dedicated Site Support Worker at Pathways to Education Program™, a national initiative supporting youth in 21 Canadian communities. Focused on enhancing educational success in Downtown Eastside/Strathcona (Vancouver) and Whalley/Guildford (Surrey). Ensuring a safe environment at programming locations, I handle room setup, food preparation, and safety checks. Responsibilities include managing attendance, supporting tutoring/mentoring, implementing security protocols, and collaborating with community center and Pathways staff. Committed to a positive, inclusive, and respectful approach in working with youth. Adheres to confidentiality policies while effectively handling emerging situations. During the school year I would spend half of my time as a site support worker, supporting inner city high school kids succeed in their academics, scholarship applications and mentor students. I knew in my heart I wanted to help others receive resources to succeed in post secondary education too. I am incredibly proud of all the 2024 students I supported in winning over $250,000 worth of scholarships. The job isn't just ensuring the youths have food security for the night, signing them in and tidying up. It is also about the relationships you build! Previously when I was Student Council President at Britannia Secondary school I got an amazing chance to connect with so many students and now they come to Pathways Program to find me for help in life, academics and applying for scholarships! Additionally many of my kids from working at The Writers Exchange who've grown up come to this program too! They say, "Hey I know you but now you have blonde hair!!". Adorable. It's so rewarding to nurture, advocate and uplift these kids to their fullest potential. Work inspires me to continue to do good work. Supporting dozens of students in my personal time! From talking about scholarships, helping them write scholarship essays, giving pep talks, life advice and then hearing the amazing news that they won life changing awards to pursue their dreams. Building important relationships with tutors and staff. Enjoying a warm cup of caffeine free tea is with your volunteers and getting to know each other is so important. Happy relationships with volunteers and staff= happy supported students! Volunteer appreciation week! We thanked and cheered our amazing volunteers with special personal name tags, fun stationary, cards, and a huge thank you letter with all of the high schoolers messages. There would be no tutoring program without our brilliant tutors. Pink Shirt Day was a success! My amazing Manager and Program Facilitator Jaclyn organize a spread of snacks, Infograph's, colouring activities and celebration to raise awareness on anti bullying. Super awesome to help set up and encourage kids to start the discussion on spreading kindness. The therapeutic cleaning after the storm of students working hard to complete their homework, eat snacks and sign out for the night. I never though washing colourful dishes in a soapy sink would be so relaxing. Some nights I become a tutor too!! A youth likes to visit me at programs for homework help because we had a teacher in common in high school. Although we had the same teacher, I didn't take the same course as him but if he's most comfortable asking me for help then I am happy to!! Some nights I can be teaching fractions and other's I can pull out my International Baccalaureate Biology class to use. Watching the kids come in tired after school, stressed about homework, and leaving with their belly's full, their peace and clarity of mind from completing their homework with help and and big smile on their face.
Excitingly this summer I was offered a position as an Instructor at the University
of British Columbia Recreation Camps creating lesson plans and teaching local and international students Introduction to Debate, and running other various recreational programs for hundreds of students. To be one of the 100 staff overseeing a total of 7,000 kids and youth is pretty special. I had the opportunity in numerous weeks to teach Introduction to Debate over 50 kids and youth. It was not a new experience for me to create and plan for workshops from my previous experiences, however having a classroom in forestry building was quite surreal. Something was different about this camp. Regardless of my experiences of sitting on the Britannia Board of Management and approving over 7 million fiscal budgets for our community with twelve other members, run programs for various inner city programs the last four years, manage a non profit organization and run various clubs, something about having 25 young students look up at you to teach them the art of how to win an argument at the University of British Columbia is quite intimidating. It was unreal to have international students come to Canada for this course, for me to happen teach them! The hard work at the end of the program would pay off when parents would come up to me, to share how much they appreciated our impact on their kids. I recall the time a kids parents came up to me and told me how they travelled here to Canada and we've changed their outlook on life, they see the passion on their kids face and they light up when they know how to have constructive debates with their peers. They thanked me from the bottom of their heart and honestly that was one of the things that inspired me to keep going. The numerous impactful feedbacks I received from parents and the students themselves. I also had the amazing chance to facilitate other programs including: Introduction to Debate, Bike Hike, Summer Spectacular, Super Soakers, Leap into Summer and Ultimate Summer. It was an incredible experience to teach kids how to gain the confidence to bike and lead them throughout the trails at UBC. It was so exciting to see them feel confident kayaking, stand up paddle boarding, paddle board, going down slides at various waterparks, swimming at pools and canoe. On the dry land we would go lazer taging, mini putting, zip linning, climbing, bowling, and have the best times singing "who let the dog out" on our school bus. Thank you to my instructors especially Oakley, Karlie, Abbey, Griffin and many more! Every experience working with you guys was incredible. Thank you to our amazing UBC Recreation Bus driver Hopman for always driving us around and being so supportive of my leadership. Thank you to my head instructors Dervla, Ella, Cam and all the admin above for making this all possible. I will forever hold this summer experience dear to my heart and cherish the friends I made along the way. In the 2024 fall semester, I will return back to Pathways to continue advocating and supporting my community!- it never ends, I love what I do.
To have the privilege to change not one but thousands of lives is so beautiful... if you can make it easier for someone else experiencing life for the first time, just like you, why not...Love, Stephanie Slen
You can read more about it or find opportunities by clicking on my website!
This inspired me to start Beyond the Plate at Britannia Secondary School. I taught students how to farm, empowering them to plant, weed, harvest and cook the vegetables we grew. I wanted to share the positive impact sustainable urban agriculture had on me with others. I founded Beyond the Plate, a club at Britannia Secondary School which provides opportunities for students to learn about urban agriculture. A cooking and gardening club I started in 2020. Our main goal is to provide opportunities to students of Britannia to garden in the school yard beds and cook fresh produce from harvested local produce. We’re the only club that manages the garden beds at Britannia and hope to continue to do so! We have accomplished a range of things from bake sales, repairing all the garden beds in the Mary Joe gardens, cooking chinese foods, baking jam cookies and other cultural delicacies. As founder, I took the initiative to build this club from the ground up - being responsible for organizing meetings, facilitating workshops, and teaching students gardening and cooking skills (even learning a few skills myself). Through my leadership and mentoring students felt empowered to take on initiatives themselves and build the confidence to continue and grow the community of Beyond the Plate. I strive to spread awareness and teach about the importance of urban agriculture and “Farm to Table” through an uplifting environment. We're proud to spend the last four years maintaining the schoolyard beds and empower other students through community leadership.
I realized that it only took one person to uplift my community me: Since I was thirteen I’ve volunteered over 2200 hours with neighbourhood gardens and various organizations. This included the Environmental Youth Alliance working at Strathcona neighbourhood gardens, Strathcona park gardens and restoration work at Renfrew collingwoods with an emphasis on protecting and preserving indigenous plants native to the lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nation. In 2019 I had the honour of serving as Britannia Secondary School’s head delegate for the Vancouver school Board Sustainability Conference. Where I attended meetings to plan exciting yearly events, organize, inspire and collaborate with like minded individuals passionate about spreading the importance of Urban Agriculture within the school system. In September of 2021 I was elected as a sustainability coordinator at Strathcona Interact Club in Vancouver's Chinatown Downtown Eastside, serving from September 2021 to August 2023. Strathcona Interact Club organizes several campaigns to help impact change in our community. Interact clubs are self-governing and financially independent. As a sustainability coordinator, specific projects I led included organizing garden meet-ups, facilitating and leading hands-on gardening workshops on sustainability and urban agriculture, as well as leading the “adopt-a-plant” initiative for youth 6-18 years old. I assisted with Winter toy drives, breakfast with Santa volunteers, community garbage pickups, as well as developing and disseminating mental health packages, high school packages, and elderly packages that included supplies, resources and tools targeted directly to the community. My interest in sustainability extended to my curiosity of our vast oceans. Out of 400 applicants, I was selected to join the Youth to Sea cohort of 80 participants. Youth to Sea is an OceanWise Program with various locations across Canada. Throughout my involvement, I actively engaged in various activities, including shoreline cleanups, invasive plant removals, and outreach events, all aimed at promoting ocean conservation. Over the course of this commitment, I completed 240 hours of community service including hosting a large clothing swap event at Stanley Park. I found interest in finding solutions for fast fashion impacting climate change and contributing to rising ocean levels. I spent months emailing schools and organizations to support us, I collected old loved clothes from dozens of people, and won a grant of $500 to build the event. We provided food, snacks, a community and free clothes people came to swap with. Thank you to Ethan and Brittney, our Youth to Sea program directors, for guiding me through the process. With a deep-rooted commitment to ocean conservation, I proudly identify myself as an ocean conservationist, driven by a desire to protect our planet's precious marine ecosystems. After spending 9 months from June 2021 to March 2022 I am now a proud Alumni.
In my sustainability journey I had an epiphany that my passions in life were specifically working with people. After my mentorship at Fresh Roots I was offered a Teen Leader position at the Writers exchange from 2019-2024, an after-school literacy program that catered to at-risk youth in Vancouver. Even after three years, my gratitude and love for these kids grew. As a teen leader my heart never stops growing, my knowledge is ever expanding for the funny jokes and fidget toys. I learn something new every time I come to work. It could be about a new Pokémon or hearing a quiet kid talk for the first time, I’m in awe every time. Every year I hear the kids' vocabulary expand, they get better at writing, learn new jokes, quirks, hobbies and personality growth! I have the honour of being a part of their literary growth. The Writers Exchange is a nurturing environment where children and teens can enhance their reading and writing abilities while fostering a love for literacy. Having been a participant for years, I transitioned into a role as a Teen Leader, where I actively engaged with children, facilitated various activities, and provided individualized support, particularly for those with diverse needs. My responsibilities include assisting children ages 5-13 in literacy activities, and childcare development, ensuring cleanliness in premises, and effectively communicating with children regardless of their verbal or non-verbal communication styles.
In 2020, I ran for Britannia Secondary School Student Council grade 11 representative for my voice and advocate for others to be heard. I hosted covid information tables to spread awareness of the resources we have at school for mental health, low income student resources and community events. During my term, the Ukraine and Russia conflict intensified and I decided to fundraise money for the refugees fleeing Ukraine for the conflict. I spent the next three weeks fundraising by going to every class in our school every morning, bringing up awareness during the council meetings, speaking on the announcements and posting on social media and reading out news reports that were occurring that week to update everyone one the situation, I was able to collect $700 from kind faculty members, students and parents. During this term the conversation in regards to implementing SOGI (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) representation and Indigenous Representation voting processes came up for discussion. After a long bureaucratic conflict we were able to successfully vote for the first SOGI reps to exist on our constitution. This vote was extremely important as it was the first to lead the way for highschools across the Vancouver School Board to implement SOGI reps. Seeing change happen made all the countless nights of reviewing the constitution, protesting for our rights with school administration, the Teachers Union and with the support of the VSB all worth it. It was important to us to fight for change, to make a path for the future and it is now a precedent written in history from the countless news stations that reported and the TYEE that wrote an article explaining the situation. In 2023 I was elected student council President by our student population. During my time as Student Council President, my executive council and I ran weekly meetings and foster school spirit for the first time in six years. I promised and ran all the events I promoted such as halloween spirit week, haunted house, holiday spirit week, foyer games every month, organized the Terry Fox run for our entire school, spoke at every assembly, spoke and ran daily announcements, organized a large movie night, bakery decorating contest, fundraised for our student council, planned and supported all the council members on our year retreat, created education posters, decorated the school with decorations. Running spirit weeks encouraged school spirit and was an important way for us to create an accepting, welcoming and foster the Britannia way of Bravery, responsibility, Integrity and Tenacity. I remember this time for my perseverance, for my leadership and advocating for the rights of the council and student population. I often humorously remember this time as the countless hours I stayed back at Britannia Secondary School and would leave the school the same time the principal would. My work in the Britannia Community during this time extended to advocating in 2023 for those not heard as Youth Representative on my community centre’s Board of Management. As a youth representative and a board member, I represent and speak up for all youth in the Britannia Secondary at the Board of Management meeting every month, speaking up for youth at the Britannia Renewal Plan to trustees from the Vancouver School Board. The Britannia Renewal included tens of millions of dollars worth of new apartment buildings for low income families , elders and artists in our community. Additionally the Renewal Plan included the discussion of the new development of all our public facilities on site. We constantly collaborated with the City of Vancouver, the Vancouver Public Library, the Vancouver School board and other necessary avenues. I believe it’s important for youth to have a say in future facilities that directly affect them. I was one of the twelve on the board of management that weighed in on approvals for 7 million dollars of fiscal budgets for our community resources in all departments including our public swimming pool, our public ice rinks, teen centre, events, public library and various child care subsidy programs. Additionally the board of management has a sub committee that allows me to further educate for Anti-Racism initiatives within my community. Advocating and fostering an inclusive space, LGBTQIA2+, anti- racism and environmentalism within the community for all youth.
After attending SHAD Canada at York University, a S.T.E.A.M. Entrepreneur Program in the summer of 2021, I was inspired and co-founded Nurtured Youth Community to provide resources to youth across Canada experiencing unsupportive parental/ guardian relationships, providing mental health packages, therapy bursaries, and more. This is what I needed and I’m proud to provide support opportunities to youth like me. It is most important to me to continue to remove barriers youth face in achieving their dreams. Recently artificially featured on the CBC News, Nurtured Youth Community was a winner of the $5000 Oxy Canada grant this year, allowing us to host free therapy workshops and we recently launched the ambassador program to inspire other youth across Canada to advocate for free healthcare. My goal for Nurtured Youth Community is to provide positive opportunities for kids affected by homelessness, drug abuse, poverty, food insecurity; all barriers I faced as a low-income youth.
After graduating at Britannia Secondary School, I was honoured to be the recipient of 8 scholarships, including the SFU Uggla Family Scholarship, Beedie Luminaries Scholarship Award, Canucks Trevor Linden Community Spirit Scholarship Award, BC Superintendents Scholarship Award, Skills for Hope Foundation Scholarship, Allan Ross Scholarship Award, Britannia Class of 77’ Scholarship and Student Council Scholarship Award. After graduation in 2023, I said goodbye to working at the Writers Exchange for the past four years and I was promoted to a role at Fresh Roots as Market Assistant. As a market assistant I stepped into the role of mentoring over 35 youth at the SOYL Program on how to farm, organize and sell produce markets across multiple cities. The locations included Vancouver's Italian Cultural Centre, Joyce Renfrew Collingwood Community Centre markets, and Coquitlams Suwalk elementary school markets. My role included farming on school yard farms every week at Vancouver Technical School and David Thompson farm sites. It was an incredible opportunity to step into a new role at Fresh Roots as a staff and use my urban agriculture experience accumulated in the last five years. We sold thousands of dollars worth of produce to fund our charity initiatives such as Lunch Lab, an affordable and nutritious food program at Grandview Elementary school, the CAS program which supported hundreds of families with organic produce each week and the SOYL program in the Vancouver and Coquitlam cohorts. Excitingly after starting school at Simon Fraser University as one of the ten in 2023, full ride Uggla Family Scholars I was offered a position at Pathways to Education by the inner city organization Pacific Community Centre. As Dedicated Site Support Worker at Pathways to Education Program™, a national initiative supporting youth in 21 Canadian communities. Focused on enhancing educational success in Downtown Eastside/Strathcona (Vancouver) and Whalley/Guildford (Surrey). Ensuring a safe environment at programming locations, I handle room setup, food preparation, and safety checks. Responsibilities include managing attendance, supporting tutoring/mentoring, implementing security protocols, and collaborating with community center and Pathways staff. Committed to a positive, inclusive, and respectful approach in working with youth. Adheres to confidentiality policies while effectively handling emerging situations. During the school year I would spend half of my time as a site support worker, supporting inner city high school kids succeed in their academics, scholarship applications and mentor students. I knew in my heart I wanted to help others receive resources to succeed in post secondary education too. I am incredibly proud of all the 2024 students I supported in winning over $250,000 worth of scholarships. The job isn't just ensuring the youths have food security for the night, signing them in and tidying up. It is also about the relationships you build! Previously when I was Student Council President at Britannia Secondary school I got an amazing chance to connect with so many students and now they come to Pathways Program to find me for help in life, academics and applying for scholarships! Additionally many of my kids from working at The Writers Exchange who've grown up come to this program too! They say, "Hey I know you but now you have blonde hair!!". Adorable. It's so rewarding to nurture, advocate and uplift these kids to their fullest potential. Work inspires me to continue to do good work. Supporting dozens of students in my personal time! From talking about scholarships, helping them write scholarship essays, giving pep talks, life advice and then hearing the amazing news that they won life changing awards to pursue their dreams. Building important relationships with tutors and staff. Enjoying a warm cup of caffeine free tea is with your volunteers and getting to know each other is so important. Happy relationships with volunteers and staff= happy supported students! Volunteer appreciation week! We thanked and cheered our amazing volunteers with special personal name tags, fun stationary, cards, and a huge thank you letter with all of the high schoolers messages. There would be no tutoring program without our brilliant tutors. Pink Shirt Day was a success! My amazing Manager and Program Facilitator Jaclyn organize a spread of snacks, Infograph's, colouring activities and celebration to raise awareness on anti bullying. Super awesome to help set up and encourage kids to start the discussion on spreading kindness. The therapeutic cleaning after the storm of students working hard to complete their homework, eat snacks and sign out for the night. I never though washing colourful dishes in a soapy sink would be so relaxing. Some nights I become a tutor too!! A youth likes to visit me at programs for homework help because we had a teacher in common in high school. Although we had the same teacher, I didn't take the same course as him but if he's most comfortable asking me for help then I am happy to!! Some nights I can be teaching fractions and other's I can pull out my International Baccalaureate Biology class to use. Watching the kids come in tired after school, stressed about homework, and leaving with their belly's full, their peace and clarity of mind from completing their homework with help and and big smile on their face.
Excitingly this summer I was offered a position as an Instructor at the University
of British Columbia Recreation Camps creating lesson plans and teaching local and international students Introduction to Debate, and running other various recreational programs for hundreds of students. To be one of the 100 staff overseeing a total of 7,000 kids and youth is pretty special. I had the opportunity in numerous weeks to teach Introduction to Debate over 50 kids and youth. It was not a new experience for me to create and plan for workshops from my previous experiences, however having a classroom in forestry building was quite surreal. Something was different about this camp. Regardless of my experiences of sitting on the Britannia Board of Management and approving over 7 million fiscal budgets for our community with twelve other members, run programs for various inner city programs the last four years, manage a non profit organization and run various clubs, something about having 25 young students look up at you to teach them the art of how to win an argument at the University of British Columbia is quite intimidating. It was unreal to have international students come to Canada for this course, for me to happen teach them! The hard work at the end of the program would pay off when parents would come up to me, to share how much they appreciated our impact on their kids. I recall the time a kids parents came up to me and told me how they travelled here to Canada and we've changed their outlook on life, they see the passion on their kids face and they light up when they know how to have constructive debates with their peers. They thanked me from the bottom of their heart and honestly that was one of the things that inspired me to keep going. The numerous impactful feedbacks I received from parents and the students themselves. I also had the amazing chance to facilitate other programs including: Introduction to Debate, Bike Hike, Summer Spectacular, Super Soakers, Leap into Summer and Ultimate Summer. It was an incredible experience to teach kids how to gain the confidence to bike and lead them throughout the trails at UBC. It was so exciting to see them feel confident kayaking, stand up paddle boarding, paddle board, going down slides at various waterparks, swimming at pools and canoe. On the dry land we would go lazer taging, mini putting, zip linning, climbing, bowling, and have the best times singing "who let the dog out" on our school bus. Thank you to my instructors especially Oakley, Karlie, Abbey, Griffin and many more! Every experience working with you guys was incredible. Thank you to our amazing UBC Recreation Bus driver Hopman for always driving us around and being so supportive of my leadership. Thank you to my head instructors Dervla, Ella, Cam and all the admin above for making this all possible. I will forever hold this summer experience dear to my heart and cherish the friends I made along the way. In the 2024 fall semester, I will return back to Pathways to continue advocating and supporting my community!- it never ends, I love what I do.
To have the privilege to change not one but thousands of lives is so beautiful... if you can make it easier for someone else experiencing life for the first time, just like you, why not...Love, Stephanie Slen
You can read more about it or find opportunities by clicking on my website!