The Aleutian Chain needs more coordination among its young leaders. That was the takeaway from the LEAD:Aleutians conference that took place in Unalaska last week.

The conference brought together twenty-odd young people to mingle and share ideas about how they’d like to see the region develop in the future. Participant and Unalaska resident Corey Nelson explained the idea behind the conference during a public presentation on Friday. 

“We’re trying to prepare emerging leaders of the next generation by building relationships, [that] is what we’ve really started to do. That’s the significant part of the last couple of days. And hopefully in the future sharing the resources that we all have in our communities and in our personal repertoire.”

Participants also offered up some specific suggestions and plans for how to improve the region.  Here’s Atka city councilor Crystal Dushkin. 

“Our region is the only region that’s lacking any kind of purposeful gathering to celebrate our Native culture, so that’s the idea behind the first part of this action item. We are already working on establishing a planning committee to get something started for our region. Some of our members in this LEAD Aleutians group are going to be the initial, founding committee members and then we are going to be reaching out to our communities, asking for more participation, getting more people involved, to plan some kind of cultural gathering.”

Other suggestions were to establish an online social network connecting regional leaders and fostering more involvement in community decision-making processes. 

A group of regional organizations called the A-Team sponsored the conference.

You can find out more about the conference and follow the group’s work on their Facebook page.