This weekend, a special conference will welcome a diverse gathering of people from across Yellowknife and beyond, including community leaders Paul Andrew and Mayor Ben Henkdriksen, to share a dialogue on the theme of home as a space of healing.
The annual Voices for Peace Conference is being held at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, hosted by Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at.
This year’s event is focussed on “healing the home and strengthening cultural roots,” explained Muzaffar Ahmad, an organizer and host of the event.
“That is something that’s important in every single household, every single community. How we come together, learn from each other, how we tackle these issues, how we can unify the community and make a stronger community by having stronger households,” Ahmad told True North FM.
The conference has taken place in Yellowknife for nearly 20 years, and each year the discussion helps open intercultural connections between people’s lived experiences.
“Certain issues we all face in the community, whether we are from Canada, we’ve immigrated Canada, whatever it is. And how we were able to see real facts instead of misinformation, but also all the different perspectives and how a lot of them are very similar, showing that no matter how different our backgrounds might be, the solutions are very similar and that is why we have to come together and be a united front,” said Ahmad.
The conference will bring together many speakers, including attendees, who will also have the opportunity to join the dialogue.
“One of the things that I really took away from the event last year was the opportunity for guests or audience members to actually give their own perspective on how they felt about the event. So, last year there was some audience members that got time to come up on the stage and give their own perspective on what they felt about the topic,” reflected Ahmed.
The event began because organizers wanted to find a way to help the community, the way the community has helped them.
“A lot of us had to migrate to other countries in order to find religious freedom. And because of that, we want to help the community the way the community helped us. So that’s why we hold these events. The objective of this event is not to have a religious debate, rather, it’s supposed to be a community dialogue where everyone faces a common issue in their respective, families, communities,” Ahmad said.
Organizers created the conference to encourage an inclusive dialogue, where people can come and ask questions and share their perspective.
“That way, we can all learn from each other because the main objective of this event is to unify the community as much as possible and learning and listening to one another is a vital part of that,” said Ahmed.
The conference is an open discussion where everyone is welcome to attend, he emphasized.
“We want everyone to come out and we want to hear their respective perspectives on these matters because we want to have a strong community. We have the opportunity to build something really, really special, which I think we already have in Yellowknife. So we continue that process because even though we are a small community, we have the ability to take advantage of some of the benefits of being a small community. And it all starts with our own respective households. So when we can learn from each other about how to build a strong household, then we can truly build a strong community.”
The Voices for Peace Conference is scheduled to take place Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre hosted by Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at.
