In Conversation With: Alfred Burgesson

John Wong | Director Community & Fund Development | Brilliant Labs

IN CONVERSATION WITH ALFRED BURGESSON

About the importance of creating opportunities and spaces for youth to co-create, innovate and lead during this period of uncertainty.

At the age of seven, Alfred Burgesson and his family moved from Ghana to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia to pursue a better quality of life. He is an alumni of Halifax Grammar School, where he continues to coach Junior High Boys Basketball there, and studied Political Science and Entrepreneurship at Saint Mary’s University. Alfred is the Project Lead at the Centre for Employment Innovation(CEI) in Nova Scotia and a member of the Prime Minister's Youth Council.

As an active connector, leader and social entrepreneur in Halifax, Alfred is deeply passionate about youth issues, inclusion, equity and community well-being. He is a member of the Halifax Public Libraries Board of Directors, an

advisory committee member of the African Nova Scotian Youth Employment Lab. Alfred is currently leading the Nova Scotia Young Leaders Initiative, which aims to create meaningful jobs for underrepresented youth, including Indigenous, African Nova Scotian, and youth with disabilities, as well as develop the leadership capacity of youth across the province of Nova Scotia.

I had the pleasure of speaking to Alfred during this unprecedented time. Here is a snip-it of our conversation. For the full interview please listen to “LIVE & IN Conversation With: Alfred Burgesson”. Now, It is my great pleasure to introduce you to Alfred Burgesson.

JW: Alfred Burgesson. Community and Youth leader. A Member of the Prime Minister’s Youth Council as well as, involved in creating space for empowering young people to actively participate in their community and have an impact.

Thank you again for joining us today. I’d like you, if you would please, share your family’s journey from Ghana to Nova Scotia.

Alfred Bugesson, Project Lead at the Centre for Employment Innovation (CEI) in Nova Scotia and a member of the Prime Minister's Youth Council.

AB: Sure. First, thank you for having me. I’m really a fan of Brilliant Labs and I’ve been looking forward to having this conversation with you. I was born in Ghana as you alluded to and my family moved from Ghana to Nova Scotia when I was really young. We moved to Canada because my parents wanted to find a better quality of life for their kids. A place with more opportunities for us. Canada was the place they identified on the map and we all moved here in 2004.

JW: Can you please share with us a couple of key experiences that have influenced you to be the person you are today?

AB: So, early on I think, when we moved from Ghana to Canada my parents were very clear that growing up as a black man in western society wasn’t going to be easy and we needed to sort of gain the respect of others. To gain respect you need to respect others. From very early we were in a house where manners and treating people equally was definitely something that was appreciated. That definitely helped my development. Growing up, I was interested in young people sort of coming together and working together.

I look back to my high school years. I was coaching middle school and junior high basketball and soccer tams. After high school, when I got into University and the broader community, I was always looking for ways to work with youth and rally my peers together to do things.

I was always interested in working with my peers whether it was through team sports or identifying a community project. My goal was to bring people together to discuss what can we do. From a very early age that's just something that I gravitated towards.

JW: I find it really interesting how you’ve taken that experience and building on that in university to currently what you’re doing right now.

AB: My journey started when it comes to youth initiatives in high school… I joined a program called Junior Achievement (JA). That’s an extracurricular program where students start a company. In the first month of school and throughout the whole year students build the company. At the end of the year there’s sort of a pitch competition that allows students from all over Nova Scotia to come together in Halifax and to share their idea, share what the process was like, what progress they made, what they learned, what successes they had and what failures they had. Junior Achievement and the company program was sort of my first intro into youth led initiative.

AB: So after high school I joined Enactus. I was able to have that similar environment I had with JA, but with my university peers. Through that experience I led a project and that was called Connect-Ed, which was essentially trying to share technology with marginalized youth. Through that project I was invited to a United Nations conference in Ottawa. It was called: The Active Citizen’s Summit.

JW: Did your exposure to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) inform your choices in education or your career path?

AB: Absolutely, yeah. I think UN SDGs were new to me then. This was a few years ago and it was an opportunity to look at them with my peers and learn more about them and to say ok...how do each of our projects, we were working on at that time, connect to the SDGs? Like you know, a global sort of agenda. A global set of goals. It allowed me to take my local idea and look at it in a global context. A global framework. It was certainly useful then and I have found it useful since to look at initiatives that are happening in Canada and to say what SDG goals could they be making progress towards? Any time I enter a new project, or initiative, SDGs are definitely brought up in terms of how can this project, or how does, this project align with our global goals?

JW: Any words of advice for organizations who are now looking at the opportunities to engage youth and to help them lead?

AB: If an organization has an idea for a new program, if it’s affecting young people, the first step is to identify young people who you can bring together to present the idea to. To say… Here's what we’re thinking, here's where we're at, what do you think? And provide the young people the opportunity to poke holes in your program.

Poke holes in your idea. Often times they will actually have ideas that will make your program or your thing you’re creating to help them. They’ll make it better. I think it’s important that you centre young people’s experiences when designing programs for them. I think if you're already developing a program, create spaces where young people can provide their input. In terms of leading, there’s also something to be said about not having a program created and just bringing young people together to say:

What’s a priority for you? Where in our local community where do you want to see change? What opportunities do you see? What challenges do you see? What challenges do you want to address? I think there’s a lot of power in actually having young people think about the local context and what the challenges are and then giving them the space to move forward and design, brainstorm and then coming up with a proposal with how they can potentially implement a solution. I think these are great questions that organizations are dealing with and for young people right now who may not have access to organizations like Brilliant Labs. Put your hand up and send your councilor, your MLA, MP notes to say… Are you considering young people's voices during this time? Find out if your local community has a youth council. Find out if your municipal or provincial bodies have these councils and if they don't. Tell them you want to start one.

There needs to be a greater intent to transfer knowledge between young people and the older generations and it’s not something that can happen in one meeting where you’re hearing young people's feedback but it needs to be an ongoing process and it needs to be intentional.

JW: Great words of advice. Thank you very much. Well on behalf of Brilliant Labs, thank you once again for chatting with us today. Greatly appreciated. Thank you for taking the time to give your thoughts and insights with us today. Many thanks again.

AB: Thanks John.

IN CONVERSATION WITH is a regular Brilliant Labs Magazine segment authored by John Wong, Director of Community & Fund Development. John’s goal is to highlight passionate community leaders who are inspiring and informing change. If you know an educator or change maker that is making a positive impact, email: John.Wong@brilliantlabs.ca | Subject: In Conversation With

Visit www.brilliantlabs.ca/magazine to listen to the full "In Conversation With: Alfred Burgesson" interview.

IN CONVERSATION WITH: ALFRED BURGESSON