Collaborative Community Builders’ Retreat – Jenna’s Reflection

In January 2026, thanks to financial support from Women and Gender Equality Canada, Righting Relations partnered with the John Humphrey Centre to bring 25 young people together at the Ciel et Bois retreat lodge for the Collaborative Community Builders Retreat; this is the third in a series of reflection from some of those participants. This reflection was shared by Jenna Aquino, one of our Youth Activist Coordinators.

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What Happens When 19 Young Activists Share a Cabin for a Weekend

A reflection on the Collaborative Community Builders Retreat with Righting Relations Canada (aka, my new favourite career memory).

2026 has already contained one of the best experiences of my career and I need to talk about it.

On January 23-26th, I was lucky enough to co-facilitate a weekend of connection, knowledge sharing, and solidarity building alongside some truly incredible people, thanks to Righting Relations Canada. Deemed a Collaborative Community Builders Retreat, it was a weekend spent bringing young activists together from across Turtle Island to help us build a sense of unity and broaden our network of changemakers.

It took months to plan and bring together, so I’ve been allowing myself to sit with what we collectively created that weekend, turning it over in my mind before writing this reflection. I keep landing in the same, simple place: deep, genuine gratitude. Gratitude for the people who showed up, for the organization that trusted me to help hold this space, and for the reminder that when you bring people with shared values together with intention and care, something truly special can unfold.

TL;DR

Event: Collaborative Community Builders Youth Retreat
Organizer: Righting Relations Canada and the John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights
Funder: Women and Gender Equality Canada
Date: January 23-26, 2026
Location: Ciel et Bois Retreat Lodge in Cantley, QC
Participants: Over 70 applicants, 19 selected young activists, ages 18-35, from across 6 provinces

Over the course of four days, a diverse group of 19 intelligent, passionate young activists from across six provinces gathered in a quiet, snowy retreat lodge. Ranging in age from 18 to 35, these incredible souls travelled from more than 10 different cities, each one bringing perspectives from their lived experiences, growing expertise, and the local movements they’re involved in. The core of the weekend’s programming centered around each participant preparing and delivering a lightning talk on a social justice matter of their choosing.

Between those sessions, we shared meals, conversations, and the kind of connection that you can feel building in real time. It was a weekend of peer-led learning, genuine relationship-building, and a whole lot of hope. This was all thanks to the support of Righting Relations Canada, who I’ve had the great privilege of working with for nearly a year now as a Youth Activism Coordinator.

Let me break down what the heck that role entails and why I’ve been so stoked about it.

About Righting Relations

First off, a little context. For those who aren’t familiar, Righting Relations is a movement of adult educators and community organizers who are working towards decolonization and radical social change across so-called Canada. That mission runs through everything they do, and this retreat was no exception. They collaborated with Edmonton’s John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights (JHC) to bring this vision to life, with generous financial support provided by Women and Gender Equality Canada. Thanks to that collaboration, I was fortunate enough to get to co-facilitate this opportunity with one of their incredible Project Coordinators, Yusi Mohammed, the Edmonton Circle Coordinator (pictured here – learn more about Yusi here!)

Cool, what’s a “Youth Activism Coordinator” though?

After doing some freelance work with Righting Relations last May, I was invited to brainstorm with the team around the idea of a youth-led collective initiative. There was funding available and a desire to take intergenerational learning to a new level by empowering young people to share their ideas and expertise.

This largely volunteer role became an avenue for continued learning and practicing activism, advocacy and solidarity building across demographics. I felt this directly in my own life and saw it first-hand among the expanding network of young activists connected through this retreat.

How It All Came Together

Getting to this weekend was its own journey, and I learned so much from the Righting Relations and JHC teams along the way. It started with conversations: meeting with the Righting Relations team and advisors from the John Humphrey Centre to understand what this retreat could be and what it needed to feel like.

What struck me early on was the commitment to doing this collaboratively, not just in theory but in practice. Potential participants were brought to the table during the brainstorming process, helping to shape the weekend before they were even formally invited to attend. That set the tone for everything that followed. From there, we built the application and the rubric together. When we put out the call, the response was staggering: over 70 applications from incredible candidates from across Canada.

Reviewing them was genuinely one of the hardest tasks I’ve taken on, not because the applications were difficult to evaluate, but because the talent and passion in those submissions was humbling and uplifting. We wanted to invite so many more people than we had beds for. Together we developed a rubric to evaluate applications, create our shortlist, reach out to successful candidates, help coordinate their travel, and plan the weekend’s programming felt less like logistics and more like the first chapters of a community forming. By the time everyone arrived at the Ciel et Bois retreat centre, I already felt deeply invested in each person who walked through that door.

Holding the Space

One of the things I’ve reflected on most since the retreat is how aligned the facilitation role felt with the kind of work I genuinely love to do. Getting to use my voice, empower others to use theirs, and apply my community engagement skills to help hold a collective space for people doing this kind of work was a real privilege.

My co-facilitator and I were thoughtful about how we opened the weekend. We began with a grounding practice and introduction from Righting Relations, followed by a circle check-in. We wanted to give everyone the chance to arrive fully before anything else was asked of them.

Before we moved into presentations or deeper discussions, we built a Community Agreement together as a group, making sure that the norms we were operating under reflected everyone’s needs and values. We set expectations clearly and considerately, and we actively invited people to chime in, ask questions, and shape how the space felt. The goal was never to run a program for the group. It was to work together as a collective to create something safe and supportive enough that real knowledge-sharing could happen. And oh, did it ever.

What Was Shared

We kicked things off with an icebreaker activity led by Yusi; a cypher activity that encourages creative introductions with an optional rhythmic twist. After that, we moved into a group discussion around what online community spaces can look like, breaking into small groups to brainstorm how we might make one work for our needs.

We wanted to open the weekend with part 1 of this discussion so that the vision for the online community could marinate in people’s minds throughout the weekend. Circling back at the end allowed us to flesh out these ideas in more detail and outline next steps for making it happen.

From there, we opened up the floor to lightning talks. All of our attendees had prepared their own unique presentation and together, covered an extraordinary range of topics; each one grounded in the speaker’s own lived experience. There was such a sense of openness, curiosity, respect, and genuine appreciation. That came through in every room, every session.

Lightning talks included the following topics from participants (last names omitted for privacy):

• Ana Laura: International human rights mechanisms and how to find/engage with them
• Anurika: Digital storytelling for community engagement
• Chúk: Impact evaluation as a tool for activism and social change
• Deep: Organizing youth-led community initiatives
• Em: Universal design and disability awareness
• Evelyne: Creating community-based and survivor-led initiatives to address transformative healing to gender based violence
• Iris: Establishing a community garden in a transitional neighbourhood to enhance food security and community engagement
• Lauren: How to design and fund grassroots projects (storytelling, partnerships, grants, etc)
• Mahnoosh: Nature-Based Interventions for Climate-Related Emotional Distress: A Scoping Review
• Mandla: Organizing with your unhoused neighbours
• Miguel: Working with the media
• Azka: Storytelling as a tool for advocacy and narrative building
• Moreades: The power of zines as a tool for expression and political education
• Rae: Art as a tool for advocacy and community building
• Sarmitha: How to conduct community-based research that strengthens advocacy
• Thawany: The power of collaboration in activism, advocacy, and social justice work

Taken together, the sessions were a testament to how much expertise exists in this generation of activists, and how powerful it is when that expertise gets a platform and an audience that truly listens.

So yeah, you can see why this was such an unforgettable experience. One that continues to fill me with inspiration, drive, and once again, gratitude.

What Comes Next

This community doesn’t stop here. Before the weekend was over, we put together an online space via Signal to keep us connected and lean on one another for resources and support.
Already, participants have been using it to circulate relevant opportunities, to learn how things are being done in different provinces, to share research studies, to gather feedback on zines, pamphlets, and other tools they’re using in their work.

Over the next year (starting this month!), we’ll be meeting quarterly to formalize the plans and infrastructure that will give our community the legs it needs to keep growing. We don’t want to scale too quickly, but are excited to be able to reach and work with more like-minded individuals doing incredible social justice work across the country.

For now though, the connections made at Ciel et Bois provide a strong foundation and now we’re building on them together. Stay tuned for updates! P.S. You can check out reflections from some of the other participants on the Righting Relations blog here and here.

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Jenna Aquino (she/her) is a developing artist, activist and writer from Hamilton, ON, living in Montreal, QC. She is a Youth Activism Coordinator with Righting Relations, a community-minded Marketing & Communications professional, and a singer/songwriter. She is passionate about facilitating meaningful conversations, shaping impactful shared experiences, and telling stories that reflect them.