[Keesha]

The key components to our youth program’s “recipe” include:

• Providing clear expectations and outlining instructions throughout the program
• A monthly calendar, and daily agenda so clients know what to expect and prepare for
• Building relationships and using transparent communication with clients, and maintaining relationships even after client has exited program
• Utilizing resources to provide guidance and support to clients

[jiannaquickstad]

Critical ‘ingredients’ in our programs ‘recipe’ are:

– Building relationships and partnerships with school divisions

– Recruiting youth with different experiences and abilities to be “youth influencers”

– Empowering the youth influencers to lead peer education sessions

– Supporting the youth to contribute to a podcast on topics important to them (each year different youth develop a new season of content)

– Developing unique card games that include information relevant to the program that can be requested for use in classrooms after the intervention

– Engaging adult mentors from the community to provide additional support to youth.

These are some elements that have really helped our program and it wouldn’t be the same without them!

[judithm]

love the empowering “youth influencers” idea!

[Gwen]

Our program has a few key activities that make up the work we do:

• 8-12 granting streams (depending on funding and staff capacity)
• capacity building workshops
• relationship building workshops and panels
• outreach and engagement initiatives
• impact sharing initiatives

To evaluate these activities and ensure they’re doing what we hope they’re doing, we use:

• participant counts for workshop attendance and number of grant recipients
• session hours and session counts
• descriptions of grantee projects (how the funding we distribute is intended to be used, broadly – i.e. 10 grants of 30,000$ were distributed, 7 projects are land-based programs, 2 are arts-based, and 1 is focused on building youth understanding around policy and advocacy)
• digital engagements (interactions on social media including page/video views, number of likes, comments, and shares)
• check-ins throughout grantee projects (space for feedback/measuring youth satisfaction and space for qualitative data sharing)
• final reports at the end of grantee projects (space for information on how funding was used more specifically – i.e. grantee #1 used 15,000$ for youth salaries and 500$ for an honorarium for an Elder; grantee project reach and time spent running grantee projects; space for feedback/measuring youth satisfaction and space for qualitative data sharing)
• feedback surveys at the end of every capacity building and relationship building session
• asking youth participants and youth advisory circle input into what they want to learn from our program evaluation so our evaluation plans are responsive to their wants and needs as well

[April]

The key components of our youth program is building trust with our stakehokders, using a collaborative approach to build rapport with the youth in the community. Recruiting mentors with similar lived experiences can help youth relate better. Collecting data by doing surveys. Building positive relationships with youth from the communtiy allows us to determine their needs.

[Cecilia]

We really like to include co-design with the youth we work with at every opportunity. From the planning phase to the running of the program to evaluation (when possible), and even revamping programs once a cohort has completed them. This allows the youth voice to be present throughout the process.

[Oghenekevwe]

I like to do pre and post-evaluation for my programs. I make sure the youths that participate in this program know the importance of the evaluations and what difference they will have in making the program a success (In the sense that it yields the intended change/ impact it was developed for)