Celebrating Youth Voices

For our Community Action Project, we wanted to organize a series of workshops to raise awareness, start conversations and find solutions on the lack of youth diversity in policy-making spaces.

“People that look like me are not really heard or viewed in a good way.” — Taymon

Our project started an in-depth conversation amongst youth from all over the Sud-Ouest/Verdun communities. We realized that the disparity between the youth who has access to information, who are able to be meet with the decision makers, and those who don’t have all these opportunities is growing steadily.

“We went to speak at city hall to discuss funding for LGBTQ + programs and we were dismissed.’’ — Zoe

There’s a lot more work to be done to include ALL youth in these conversations. (First nations, Indigenous youth, newcomers, refugee youth, non-binary youth, youth from different nationalities, religions, socio-economic backgrounds, low-mobility youth, youth living with a disability, mental illness, etc.)

Our next steps as a group:

1-To summarize all the notes, to schedule the next organizational meeting. The second (low-key) gathering will be more focused on identifying the problem, elaborate on solutions and specify which actions to take.

2-To continue to create a safe space for our youth while reaching out to communities that would want our assistance/support/partnership.

3-To mobilize with other groups while having our youth engage and build bridges between our communities.

4-To do all this through gatherings, cultural events, human rights education sessions, community talks.

5-How can we get the right people in the room? How to prepare the right people to be in the room? (decision-makers, newcomers, refugee youth, indigenous youth, etc.)

6-We operate at night but most organizations, people finish their day around 5:00 - 6:00 PM. Our next gathering will have to be during the day, during a ped day (no school).