July 12 to 17 are just five days. Five whole days I once spent idling on the beaches of Italy and Greece. Five days I once spend playing silly games as a child. Just another five days of a week. Another week of a life.

But this year, those five days marked the days of the 2010 iEARN International Conference and Youth Summit, which I helped facilitate for half of the week as a member of the TakingITGlobal team. I'm back home now, and watching the conference from afar like many of you, but the experience left a mark on me, nonetheless.

Some moments were eventless and dull. Some were impossibly hectic! One particular morning was so jam-packed yet slow-paced that it felt like an entire day while the afternoon following it passed by in a flash. Such are the duties of a conference assistant.

But there are moments, conversations, ideas and smiles that I won’t soon forget. I was inspired in the subtlest but most lasting ways by the people I met: the teachers and educators, the organizers and leaders, the presenters and keynoters, the mentors and most importantly, the youth.

I was lucky, as an interviewer and blogger to have the opportunity to hear their stories and opinions first-hand, and to discuss with some of them the welfare of our world and our world’s educational systems.

The conference program, full of workshops, panels, keynotes and other special events, was stellar, but it was during the breaks, and in between sessions that I had these opportunities for discussion and inspiration. It was while talking with people from all over the world, one on one, and while hearing their opinions, that I formed and shared with them my own. Through our combined constructive thinking, a lasting impression was made upon me.

As a youth myself, I recognize that we have the most to benefit from this year’s iEARN conference. Our minds are fresh and avidly take in ideas, chewing them thoroughly. We experience the world around us in colours not yet named. We see hope as a tool, rather than a last resort. We are the future, and I never realized this more than while I was talking with global youth about their lives. Their world is my world, and it’s your world too. Youth summits like iEARN are vital to the health of the world, because they bring together the most critical component of the world’s future: its leaders and their ideas.

Inspiration in these youth is what we need the most, as it is the rolling stone upon which dreams, ideas and plans are built. And as I have personally experienced, communication is the spark for that inspiration. Foster it and embrace within your own communities, and we may be able to continue sharing it with the world in conferences like iEARN.

Enjoy the last days of the Conference!