The Roots and Shoots conference,

which is held here at Science North annually,

for the past nine years,

and then 2009 will be the 10th anniversary of Roots and Shoots.

It’s a very different and unique conference.

The intent is to attract young people, their teachers, their parents

to an event where participants are exposed to some very unique ideas,

ideas that influence the participants into doing exciting projects

in their own backyard,

in their own community,

possibly even in developing countries.

But the idea is to inspire,

to influence these young people

to do things positively

that influence the world around them.

Some of these projects can be simply as using native vegetation

to re-green a barren schoolyard or your own backyard

to helping a local food bank

to building homes in developing countries

or even delivering solar panels in these places.

The idea is that the conference exposes young people

to meet people who are doing these very innovative projects,

and the bottom line is that

anyone can actually do these projects

and influence the world positively around them.