“I like being part of a community that continuously strives to bring meaningful change around the globe.” – Sauvé Fellow

Participants

From May 9th-16th, 2015, the second edition of Sauvé Encore! brought together thirteen Fellows representing nine different cohorts and eleven different nationalities. Tomer Avital (Israel, 2008-09), Manish Thapa (Nepal, 2006-07), Saman Ahsan (Pakistan, 2003-04), Siddharth Bannerjee (India, 2007-08), Stéphanie Jensen-Cormier (France, 2011-12), Éloge Butera (Rwanda, 2009-10), Anupreeta Das (India, 2004-05), Guy Milongo (Congo, 2012-13), Pyone Kyaw (Myanmar, 2008-09), Tairah Firdous (India/Kashmir, 2012-13), Janet Jobson (South Africa, 2009-10), Paul Omonge (Kenya, 2011-12) and Yaniv Rivlin (Israel, 2009-10) were actively engaged in a full week of rich programming aimed at further amplifying their impact, leadership skills and community ties. To achieve this, the schedule focused on Sharing Sessions, Leadership Encounters, Panel Discussions, Workshops and Guided Conversations.

Read participant Janet Jobson’s reflection on the week in Creating space for heads and hearts – bringing ourselves into amplifying impact!

Key Successes

• Fellows appreciated the time and space to engage with each other;
• There was a good balance between fun activities, reflective sessions and skill-training workshops;
• Fellows learned a great deal from Alumni–led sessions, which allowed for a lot of interaction between participants.

To see Sauvé Encore! in action, check out our Flickr Photo Albums and Sauvé Encore! Photo Essay.

Program and Presenters

Sharing Sessions: Through a visual exercise, participants mapped their life path before and after the Sauvé program. During a workshop facilitated by Chad Lubelsky of the J.W. Family McConnell Foundation, participants shared their skills, gifts and visions of the world in order to become aware of how to better support each other and start collaborations.

Leadership Encounters were opportunities for Fellows to learn about different leadership paths reflecting on their own experience as leaders. Fellows had two Leadership Encounters with:

– Patrick Brennan, Brett House and Anita Nowak highlighted different cultural practices in mentorship.

– The Honourable Jean Charest reflected on various challenging and empowering experiences from his public leadership journey, he prompted Fellows to consider work/personal balance and to appreciate the value of gender balance in public leadership.

Panel Discussions:

• Public Leadership for Cultural Diversity (Moderated by Sauvé Fellow Sidd Bannerjee, with guest speakers Nadia Dugay, Pearl Eliadis, Alexandre Trudeau and Vivianne Ducheine from the City of Montreal’s Social Diversity office): Building on the theme chosen by the Foundation for its inaugural Public Leadership Program – Public Leadership for Culturally Diverse Societies – the invited panelists discussed different approaches to understanding and relating to cultural diversity.
• The State of the World Today: Canada’s Role Tomorrow (with guest speaker Robert Greenhill and Sauvé Fellows Éloge Butera, Saman Ahsan, Sidd Bannerjee and Stéphanie Jensen-Cormier): The panel explored key issues, trends, risks and opportunities confronting today’s world and why Canada should care.
• Being a Thought Leader (with Antonia Maioni, Tom Axworthy, Liane Benoit, Jonathan Sas and Pyone Kyaw): In this very interactive panel, Fellows were encouraged to think about the ‘big ideas’ driving their work: how can we change the world through bold ideas?

Guided Conversations:

• Nepal Crisis and Relief Aid: Manish shared his experience responding to the recent Nepal earthquake. Tairah, who was involved in the emergency response to the earthquake with Oxfam India, also shared her observations. The conversation touched upon the challenges of responding to humanitarian crisis and the dynamics involved in international relief aid.
• Youth Engagement: Bringing perspectives from different countries and regions, Janet, Paul, Gioel and Désirée McGraw guided a conversation on youth engagement. Fellows discussed different regional experience of youth engagement stressing the opportunities and challenges of integrating young people in public leadership.
• Leadership Development Groups: Throughout the week, Fellows were divided into two leadership development groups. The groups took part in a series of guided activities to share the ups and downs of their leadership path. The groups were designed to create a safe space for reflecting on the broader vision underlining each Fellow’s work.

Fellow-led training sessions included practical skill and knowledge sharing facilitated in an intimate and informal setting:

• Storytelling with Tairah: Fellows were guided to think about the power of using different voices to tell a story, and practiced telling their own personal stories to reach to different audiences.
• Building an engaged social media presence with Anupreeta and Tomer: Anupreeeta and Tomer designed a workshop highlighting the power of online tools – such as Twitter and crowdfunding platforms – to reach wider audiences and build support for social causes.
• Cross Cultural Collaboration with Stéphanie and Lilit Simonyan (Sauvé Alumna): Through a card game, this workshop created a scenario where Fellows had to deal with cultural differences effectively. The simulation sparked a lively discussion on managing intercultural teams and dealing with intercultural communication.
• Public Campaigns & Advocacy with Jonathan Sas (Sauvé Alumnus) and Graham Mitchel (Broadbent Institute): This session walked Fellows through the different steps of designing a winning campaign to push forward their causes.

For Sauvé Encore! Presenters’ biographies, click here.

And Fun Activities!

• A weekend in the countryside, at Nancy Wright’s cottage, filled with long walks, delicious meals together and games.
• Fellows practiced yoga throughout the week.
• Fellows showed off their culinary skills in a cook off, followed by PlayBack theatre show hosted at Sauvé House.
• Fellows sang their hearts out during Karaoke night.
• Finally, the closing dinner was a space to celebrate Fellows’ time together at Sauvé House!