Events

Building Resilience: How Supporting Young People Strengthens Our Community

Every young person deserves the opportunity to experience safety, stability, and hope. In this presentation, Julie-Ann Hunter, Executive Director of the Victoria Youth Empowerment Society (VYES), will share how VYES supports more than 1,000 youth and families each year through a continuum of prevention, early intervention, housing, mental health, family support, and crisis services. The presentation will explore how VYES's individualized, relationship-based approach helps young people build resilience, strengthens families, and creates healthier communities, while highlighting the partnerships that make this work possible

Speaker: Julie-Ann Hunter is the Executive Director of the Victoria Youth Empowerment Society (VYES), where she leads an organization supporting youth and families across Greater Victoria through prevention, early intervention, housing, mental health, and crisis services.

A Registered Social Worker with an MBA specializing in Social Enterprise, Julie-Ann has dedicated more than 20 years to working alongside young people and their families. She also serves as Co-Chair of the Collaborative to Prevent Youth Homelessness, bringing together community partners to develop long-term solutions that help young people thrive.

Julie-Ann is passionate about building strong communities by ensuring every young person has the opportunity to experience safety, stability, connection, and hope.

Fair Sailing - Rethink Cruise Tourism

Fair Sailing advocates for an approach to cruise tourism that prioritizes local communities and the environment of Victoria, Canada's busiest cruise ship port-of-call. The presentation provides an overview of local cruise tourism practices and offers feasible solutions to reduce impacts on the community. Our solutions are based on years of data-collection, research, and analysis of the local and global cruise industry.

Speaker: Vicki Küng is Executive Director and co-founder of Fair Sailing, an all-volunteer non-profit organization that documents cruise tourism impacts in Victoria, and advocates solutions. Küng co-owned a design and branding firm in California that specialized in international marketing, retail and manufacturing, and technology. Prior to that she spent a decade in the travel industry. A Victoria resident since 2018, she grew up on sailboats in Southern California.

Also presenting is Fair Sailing co-founder and Board Director Anke Bergner.

Keith will lead a presentation on what the international service committee does and how international service through the Rotary Foundation changes the world.

B.C.’s seniors’ population is growing and people are living longer, putting increasing pressure on government services in health care, housing, income supports, community supports and transportation. Seniors Advocate Dan Levitt will provide an overview of the work of the Office of the Seniors Advocate, including its role in monitoring seniors’ issues and services and advocating for seniors and caregivers. He will highlight key issues facing older adults and recommendations for improving services, as well as discuss how seniors contribute to the wellbeing of their community. 

Bio for Dan Levitt, BC Seniors Advocate. 

Dan Levitt has tirelessly championed the rights of seniors for 30 years at the provincial, national and international levels.Prior to his appointment as B.C.’s Seniors Advocate, Dan held leadership positions in senior-living and long-term care homes in the Lower Mainland for more than ten years where he helped shape a dementia-friendly future for seniors and their loved ones.He was an adjunct professor of gerontology at both Simon Fraser University and a former sessional instructor at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. He has also been a surveyor with Accreditation Canada, reviewing quality improvement and person-centred care at long-term care homes and community-based service providers across the country.He is a certified health executive with the Canadian College of Health Leaders and achieved Fellowship status in the college in July 2024. He also received the Young Executive Award presented by the BC Lower Mainland Chapter Executive of the Canadian College of Health Leaders. On the global stage, Levitt recently served as a member of the board of directors of the Global Ageing Network and the International Federation on Ageing.Dan earned an undergraduate degree from the UBC and masters degree from the University of North Texas, Center for Studies in Aging. He has served on the board of directors for the Denominational Health Association and the Alzheimer Society of British Columbia. He is inspired by the aging journeys of his grandparents and great-grandparents, and is now supporting his parents, who are living life to the fullest in their mid-80s.