Workshops started today, with the day's theme being Social Entrepreneurship. It was hard to choose which ones to go to with simultaneous workshops, round tables and conferences on a number of extremely interesting topics. There was one, however, that stood out. One of the late afternoon sessions included a talk-show featuring a panel of experts from around the world.

Between sessions I hung out a lot at the radio broadcasting booth today. It's actually really cool, being broadcast around Quebec City and played in rooms all over the congress. We had several live discussion/debates on there today and interviews with different delegates with really good stories but the best part to me is just hearing the music from all over the world, brought by the delegates themselves.

Speaking of delegates with good stories, I got to interview a young guy from Ghana with a pretty unique story about how a backpack helped him to get to the Congress. I guess about eight years ago he was in school and picked up a secondhand backpack, inside which he found an address. He wrote to it and received a reply from a girl in Ontario, who didn't even realize that her mom had given her backpack to Goodwill and mystery of all mysteries, how it ended up in Ghana. They remained friends for quite some time, but eventually lost contact. When the young man found out he was coming to Canada for the congress he did some searching around and managed to get back into contact with his friend, who wrote the story of how they met and sold it to make money for his trip.

Otherwise, I had to do a double take at lunch time when I passed a woman in the lunch line that looked like someone from my favourite Canadian TV show. Turns out it was her, and she was doing backup singing/dancing for Jully Black, who was performing for the congress later in the evening.

Back again, the Governor General hosted a youth dialogue session in the evening, with guests including some pretty cool Canadian artists, including an Angloquin rapper named Samian who has quite a following here in Quebec. Because of my other activities I managed to miss out on most of the dialogue, only catching the last half hour, but others tell me that it fell a little short of expectations even though Michaelle Jean was very nice.

The session was moderated by the host of MusiquePlus, Quebec's version of MuchMusic and Sol Guy, the Canadian Producer that hosts MTV's 4Real, a show that takes celebrities to different areas of the world to meet with youth leaders who are having serious impacts on their communities and countries. These two were also the hosts of the evening's concert, which was sponsored by the group Apathy is Boring, which aims to increase political participation of youth in Canada.

For me the concert was the standout moment of the congress so far. There were a few good artists there were invited to perform but it was Toronto-based rapper and poet, K'naan that really blew me away. I'd heard some of his music before, but seeing him perform was incredible. He was born in Somalia and experienced a volatile childhood before moving to Canada when he was nine. Now using the inspiration of his home country, his lyrics have the power to evoke an extremely emotional response, even for those who cannot relate to the pain and suffering of his people. What perhaps really affected the atmosphere was the fact that there were many in the audience who understood first hand what type of violence and government instability K'naan is singing about.

I also think the fact that Michaelle Jean was dancing and singing along, clearly a fan of his, speaks to his overall appeal and sense of inspiration for all those who see him. I got quite a laugh actually as I was right up front, owing to having to cover the event and she was standing right behind me and her uniformed guard was to my left and even he was dancing and clapping along. I thought was cool though, cause I actually was able to strike up a conversation with her female guard, who recognized me from the other events and then got to have a brief conversation with Michaelle Jean about K'naan in particular, and what she thought of the congress.

Anyways, wrapped up the day with another printing session lasting until 4 am.