Published in: Donor Drives

DonorDrive4Dorothy Swabs At the Excellence Conference: Why It’s Important To The community

Author DD4D

Published on: October 13, 2014

This year’s Excellence Conference was a grand success. It was held at Kingdom Life Ministries on September 27th. The conference was attended by Caribbean-Canadian youths and their parents focused on the pursuit of higher education and long term achievement. A wide cross section of outstanding professionals was also in attendance, anxious to share their knowledge and experience with students.

There are immense challenges facing today’s students as it relates to the evolving job market, it’s competitiveness and rapid growth in technology, as well as economic setbacks. This conference offered students many opportunities to network, and gain an understanding of various industries across Canada.

The Excellence Conference is the brainchild of Celia Meikle, who four years ago, was stunned to learn that 23% of Caribbean-Canadian students pursued tertiary education. This troubling statistic propelled Celia and friends to launch The Excellence Conference. It’s goal being to ‘provide a forum through which students and their parents are inspired to achieve their academic and professional goals’.

Such a conference that uplifts Caribbean-Canadian students from a place of mediocrity to a state of excellence must be applauded and is a significant achievement for the West Indian community in Canada.

At the conference, DonorDrive4Dorothy continued on it’s mission of educating, raising awareness and encouraging young black persons (especially males) to become stem cells donors. Eighteen (18) potential donors came forward and registered with Canada’s OneMatch Stem Cell and Marrow Network (OneMatch) registry.

DonorDrive4Dorothy is thankful to all those who proudly volunteered to save lives and donate blood and encourages other Canadian black youth between 17 and 35, to do likewise.