Youth Engagement: Are we there yet?

John Fox, Robins Appleby & Taub LLP & and Chair, Laidlaw Foundation

 

Earlier this week I presented a new Strategic Plan to the Membership of the Laidlaw Foundation at its Annual General Meeting. Strategic Planning is the quintessential board activity, and delivering the Plan to the members is one of the really great things board chairs get to do.

 

The Foundation focuses on supporting young people and believes that every young person should have a chance to succeed in this country and be fully engaged in civic, social and cultural life.

 

That’s the Vision. A vision is like the destination at the end of a long car ride. It’s what you want to see when you are “there”. When I stole my kids’ usual question about car trips and asked the meeting “are we there yet?”, they gave me back the answer I usually give my kids: NO, we’re not there yet.

  Here are a few stats to illustrate why:  

• Youth unemployment is consistently double the national average. In June 2012, it was 14.8% vs. the national average of 7.2%.

 

• Young people who have jobs are more vulnerable than others. They make up only 16% of Canada’s labour market and yet they accounted for half of all job losses during the recession.

 

• In 2012, summer jobs were at the lowest level since data was first collected in 1977.

 

• While more young people get to university, 1 out of 3 25-to-29-year-olds with postsecondary diploma are in low-skilled occupations after graduation, which is tough since their debt load is much higher than ours was.

 

• And it’s worse still for racialized communities, some of which experience twice the youth unemployment rate of the general youth unemployment rate.

  (Thanks to Toronto Community Foundation for the Stats)  

So for many of the young people, the systems we have in place are not working, and we are all running a risk of leaving a huge group of our young citizens disenfranchised and frustrated.

  The Strategy  

Yet, I can’t help but be optimistic. Because Laidlaw funds young people with the ideas, skill, determination and good nature to make a difference, we know a few things: young people are creative and engaged with work that fits their values, they are more comfortable working in collaboration than we were, and there is simply no limit to the creativity and imagination of the young people we meet. Take a look at the back of our annual report for the incredible, energetic groups we fund. (www.laidlawfdn.org )

 

Our strategy – our next milestone on the car ride – is to use our relationship with our grantees to build the case for systemic changes that will improve the prospects of young people and actually influence at least one such change.

 

We’ll be building on our funding relationships to identify places where youth can be better supported whether though legislation, or just the way the non-profit sector works. By combining research with the lived experience of our grantees, we think we will be able to make a uniquely credible case for change. Our first target issues will be building what we call “shared administrative platforms” which allow youth groups to use common resources, and focusing on community based education as a means of reconnecting young people who are out of the traditional education systems to the supports they need to succeed.

 

We will also be looking at ways to put the Foundation’s capital at the service of our vision rather than just the annual revenue. The foundation sector in Canada is sitting on serious money which is generally invested in traditional ways. What happens if social impact becomes an investment criteria for even a portion of that money? We will be looking at that.

  The Hard Part – Making an Impact  

Strategic Planning is hard when it’s done right for one very simple reason: there are always more good ideas than money. It’s the right problem to have, and one that is familiar to any executive who has had to prepare a business plan, but that does not make it easy to resolve.

 

While Laidlaw will continue to set aside resources for new and emerging ideas – we have come to the conclusion that by focusing our resources on specific issues, and by taking full advantage of our connection to the groups we fund, we are best placed to be able to make permanent, positive change that will benefit young people.

  And that is something to be proud of.