Where Our Sidewalk Begins: Innovative approaches to working with youth

A conversation bringing together people in the Waterloo Region who are interested in innovative approaches to working with youth.

Shel Silverstein’s brilliant and well known poem, “Where the Sidewalk Ends”, speaks to knowing that there is hope in a future that looks different than today. In his poem, Silverstein describes how children know where the sidewalk ends, but beyond the sidewalk, children enter into a world of wonder, imagination, creativity, knowledge, space, possibilities and wisdom. He reminds us that children hold insights and unique approaches to life that have the potential to cultivate all sorts of new ways of thinking and doing.

This gathering was an opportunity to meet like-minded, passionate individuals who also believe in that notion and have a desire to support sharing the wisdom of our young people in order to build our individual and community resilience. Together we learned about what has and hasn’t worked, built a network of support, and began to explore how our collective experiences with youth in this Region might help us think more effectively together and to begin the process of co-creating possible futures.

Dabblers, cynics, experimenters, teachers, innovators, bystanders were in attendance.

"For the children, they mark and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends"
~Shel Silverstein