Sefin Stefura

Sefin Stefura (he/him or she/her) 

Sefin is an impassioned community leader who has worked diligently for the past decade to advocate for better conditions for marginalized youth. Currently, she is working to implement the Icelandic Prevention Model in Cape Breton, a model which aims to reduce youth substance use by improving protective factors and reducing risk factors.

Prior to that, Sefin worked for more than half a decade for the Cape Breton Youth Project, whose mandate is to make Nova Scotia a safer, happier, and healthier place for 2SLGBTQ+ youth. As the Lead Trans Educator, Sefin regularly travelled to schools, conferences, and workplaces across Cape Breton Island to provide presentations, professional developments, and keynote presentations to a variety of audiences.

Overall, he is comfortable presenting to adults, youth, and children on a number of different topics.

Speaker Topics:

2SLGBTQ+ Training - 30m - 3h+

• Gender/Sexuality 101; As the world becomes more inclusive, more and more terms and flags keep coming up. How can you stay responsibly updated with modernized terminology and respectful interaction? Sefin guides you and your team through the changing climate of gender identity and sexual orientation.

• Pronoun Etiquette; Are you unsure about how to properly address the gender-diverse community? What about if you don't know someone's gender identity? Sefin breaks down the differences in addressing people respectfully in the past, present, and future.

• First-Voice Transness; Having grown up in Cape Breton with an unsupportive family, Sefin can speak to the breadth of experiences one can have as a young gender-diverse person. His thoughtful reflections about how he survived a culture of transphobia serves to inspire the next generation to be the change they want to see in the world.

Mental Health Awareness - 30m - 1h30m

• With psychology as her major in university, Sefin combines a community-research lens with lived experience as a person living with mental illness. In doing so, she can curate a personal presentation promoting mental wellness while sharing lived experiences as an individual learning to cope with complex mental health issues and trauma.

• Having had traumatic experiences himself, Sefin ensures a trauma-informed lens in all that he does and shares with others how to do the same. How can you support those struggling around you?

• Upstream prevention is a new focus of Sefin's; how can we make changes earlier, so youth don't suffer the consequences of inaction? Based on research and guiding principles from the globally-successful Icelandic Prevention Model, Sefin takes us through some good practices and practical implementation of preventative health promotion strategies.