The youth will be in town attending a youth skills conference at the Explorer Hotel.

The first of two conferences will be held Feb. 3 with the young women's conference.

The second will be Feb. 10 for young men.

This will be the second young women's conference hosted by Skills Canada NWT/NU and the inauguration of a young men's conference.

"There was a bit of a question last year on why it was only for the women, but we had to start somewhere," said Skills Canada executive director Alyson Stroeder.

This year the question was, could the organization afford to host both conferences?

It came down to sponsorship and, Stroeder said, they were fortunate to have three corporate sponsors, on top of their regular corporate supporters, come forward.

"When these three companies stepped forward it was enough to put us over the edge," said Stroeder.

The participating students - 200 girls, 200 boys - will get a chance to attend during their respective conference.

The topics range from cooking to diamond polishing and aircraft maintenance.

In all, there are 28 workshops in various fields to choose from.

The goal of the conferences are to create an interest in students towards skilled labour.

Each workshop is conducted by a mentor in the appropriate field and Stroeder said it was fairly easy getting businesses on board.

"The women's was really easy we had people calling us," she said.

"It was a little more difficult for the men because we hadn't done one before and it's a busy time of year."

Stroeder is also pleased that some of the communities from the North Slave region, such as Fort Smith and Fort Simpson, will also be sending delegates for the first time this year.