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Youth engagement is about empowering young people as valuable partners to address issues and make decisions that affect them personally or that they believe to be important.

Our path

Engaging young people has always been a priority for us. Over the years, we’ve co-developed resources with young people. They're also integrated as important partners on all our key projects and initiatives, through our youth advisory council.

Where we started

Like many engagement journeys, ours began by creating opportunities for young people to be heard and have their voices amplified. We then started building our sector’s capacity for meaningful engagement and supporting provincial youth engagement efforts for various initiatives, including system-level working groups and Ministry-led projects.  

Learn more about our youth engagement journey 

Where we are now

We set the bar for our sector with our co-developed provincial quality standard for youth engagement (more on that below). Since its release, our program has helped many organizations along their implementation journey and increase their capacity for meaningful youth engagement at the organizational and system levels. This support continues through our engagement grants and engagement community of practice.

Where we are headed

Meaningful engagement will always be a guiding principle of our approach and remains a focus area of our work in our strategic plan for the years ahead. We currently provide guidance and support for youth and family engagement efforts for several multi-sectoral, system-level and provincial initiatives with mandates that stretch well into the coming years.

Quality standard for youth engagement

The quality standard for youth engagement describes nine principles that contribute to high-quality youth engagement. The standard details background, rationale, best practices and practical approaches for each principle, and defines what each one means for young people, agencies and decision makers. 

Resources to support implementation

Implementing the quality standard for youth engagement means more young people are engaged in a more meaningful way, informing services and leading to better service experiences and outcomes. And we want to support implementation in any way we can! Check out the resources below and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact us. Our team can connect you with one of our engagement specialists!

What’s in it for me?!

This resource was co-developed by young people for their peers to better understand the quality standard for youth engagement. It unpacks what the principles that make up the standard mean for young people, and how they work together to inform high-quality, meaningful youth engagement.

Youth engagement traffic light

This resource is a visual aide to help understand the continuum of youth engagement (from negative, disengaging activities to the highest forms of engagement) and guide conversations between adults and young people who are planning for organizational-, community- and system-level youth engagement.

Developing core and implementation teams

Based on implementation science, this resource identifies and describes the purpose and structure of core teams and implementation teams. It was developed to support stakeholders, organizations, communities and systems in their initial efforts to implement the quality standard for youth engagement.

Introduction video

This video is geared toward organizations and communities interested in implementing the quality standards for youth and family engagement. It’s intended to provide an orientation to the quality standards, including defining key terminology and introducing the principles.

Action planning templates

Action planning agenda template

This agenda template provides a sample plan and activities to support the core team to create an action plan. An action planning meeting could be a full-day meeting, or could be accomplished through several shorter meetings, as needed.

Project-based action plan template

Use the project-based action plan template to help identify how organizational milestones can be mapped onto corresponding quality statements to show how a project aligns with the quality standard for youth or family engagement — and how alignment can be enhanced. For help getting started, refer to the example project-based action plan.

Principles-based action plan template

Use the principles-based action plan template to help structure planning for activities drawing upon the best practices and principles of the quality standard for family engagement.

Check out our youth peer support video series