Educational Resources

Source: Public Policy Forum

Summary: While conditions vary across First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities, as well as urban and rural contexts, the well-being gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations is significant across most of the country. Population aging and emerging labour shortages in Canada present an opportunity for Aboriginal youth, as the fastest growing demographic, to make a significant contribution to the country’s long-term prosperity. As the Aboriginal population is projected to rise above 1.5 million by 2026, there is an urgency to act now to enable, support, and empower Aboriginal youth to achieve their potential and participate fully in Canada’s social and economic future.

Achieving better outcomes requires innovative ways of approaching enduring challenges. Although Aboriginal communities, organizations, businesses, governments, and foundations are working to improve Aboriginal socio-economic conditions, many remain disconnected from one another and struggle to effectively engage Aboriginal youth and their communities, resulting in missed opportunities and limited impact. Businesses and foundations are increasingly interested in working with Aboriginal partners, while governments and Aboriginal organizations are increasingly recognizing that they cannot address complex issues on their own. Many leaders are encouraged by benefits of building new, collaborative solutions.

From May to November 2011, leaders from Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, the Assembly of First Nations and its Youth Council, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami and its Youth Council, the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, Suncor Energy, and Social Innovation Generation @ MaRS worked with the Public Policy Forum to assess the value and viability of creating a multi-sectoral collaborative focused on Aboriginal youth. The PPF held a series of roundtables and virtual engagement sessions with over 75 Aboriginal youth and organizational leaders across sectors. Benchmarking research on existing collaborative models was also conducted to learn about the design, key lessons and success factors for each approach.

The feasibility study confirmed that we need to improve how organizations (including Aboriginal organizations, governments, businesses, and civil society) and communities work together by creating a long-term, multi-sectoral, national collaborative of Aboriginal youth and organizational leaders. The proposed collaborative would:

• develop and launch a national Aboriginal youth leadership program that will help youth leaders
• develop and amplify a series of community based projects that will change the trajectory of their communities and their own future prospects
• support these and other community based efforts by connecting them with each other and with external resources (e.g. financial, coaching, expertise)
• share good community practices throughout the network
• enable organizations and practitioners working on Aboriginal youth leadership and community development to learn from and build on each other’s efforts, and to develop new practices together

Over the coming months, proposed next steps include:

1. assembling a leadership table and determining partners, funding sources, an institutional home and a sustainable funding model for the collaborative,
2. working with Aboriginal youth leaders to develop and pilot a youth leadership program,
3. begin supporting promising community-based approaches by connecting them to each other and to external partners, and
4. formally launching the collaborative by holding one or more events co-designed by Aboriginal youth to highlight community-led processes, develop membership principles, and establish a developmental evaluation process.