By Julianne Kelso

In 2012, a group of undergraduate students in the University of Toronto’s Contemporary Asian Studies program founded and organized the first annual “Interrogating Notions of Development and Progress” (INDePth) conference, bringing together future leaders to ask important questions and devise solutions to global development problems. The second annual INDePth conference will be held in March 2013, with attendees from universities around the world meeting at U of T’s Hart House for three days to discuss, debate, and network with others who share an interest in development. This year, INDePth has been awarded a grant from the Faculty of Arts and Science Dean’s International Initiatives Fund, which supports creative and innovative initiatives to expand international opportunities for students.

Planning the conference has been a long and sometimes difficult process for the 25-member executive team, led by co-presidents Zhiying Zhang and Betty Xie.Zhiying and Betty both worked on the highly successful 2012 INDePth conference, and used their experience to reshape the internal structure for the 2013 executive team by creating marketing, internal, outreach, and fundraising divisions. Because the executive team is so large, the divisions often meet separately, but they manage to stay connected and organized through online tools such as email, Facebook, Dropbox, and Google Drive. “Coming from different disciplinary and cultural backgrounds, we always have contesting ideas,” Zhiying admits. “But along the way, we’ve learned a lot about effective communication, and how to use collective wisdom wisely.”

The team members work together to come up with creative new ideas for the conference, whose scope they continue to expand. The Dean’s International Initiatives Award will allow INDePth not only to mitigate the financial risk involved in undertaking such a large project, but also to be even more creative and provide further valuable opportunities for students. Such opportunities include daily “unconference” sessions, in which students direct discussions about development towards their own interests as they work together to brainstorm and design solutions to local and global problems.There is also a special Gala Dinner for attendees, as well as the event that Zhiying is most looking forward to, the “Great Debate” on the issue of development in China, which will wrap up the conference on the third day.

Conference attendees will include students from Canada, the US, and Indonesia, as well as members of NGOs, social activists, scholars, and business people, making INDePth an excellent networking opportunity. For co-president Betty Xie, “the most exciting part about the INDePth experience is the learning opportunity that it provides; not merely to students attending the conference, but more importantly to all of us who have been passionately involved in planning it.”

The conference will take place March 8–10, 2013, at the University of Toronto. For more details and to register, visit http://indepthconference.com/.