The Rideau Hall Foundation’s commitment is to honour the legacy of Forum for Young Canadians by maximizing its program impact for youth that is representative and inclusive and encourages engaged young leaders in a way that advances a new chapter for civic engagement in our country.
The following resources share outcomes and feedback from the various engagement and consultation strategies employed from April 2021 to January 2022. These insights will help to build on Forum’s strengths while adapting to new and innovative opportunities for Forum’s programming to evolve and will guide program development that ensures our young people receive the support and tools they need for continued experiential learning and meaningful engagement.
Youth Engagement Executive Summary
In the summer of 2021, the Rideau Hall Foundation commissioned a comprehensive consultation for the Forum for Young Canadians (Forum) program to better understand the youth engagement space and to build a fulsome picture of youth civic engagement for the future.
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The Future of Youth Civic Engagement
Over the last year, the Rideau Hall Foundation partnered with Abacus Data and spoke to over 2,700 individuals who had ties to youth engagement (or were youth themselves), to understand the future of youth civic engagement.
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Forum for Young Canadians National Advisory Council 2021-2022
In April 2021, the RHF established a committee comprised comprised of 17 intergenerational leaders from across the country with diverse experiences and expertise in the areas of education and civic engagement to provide creative and strategic advice on the future of Forum. This council included RHF Board members and staff, Forum Board members, recent and non-recent Forum alumni, and leaders not previously connected with Forum or its programming. This year-long journey for the Council concluded in January 2022 with key recommendations represented in the following graphic recording.
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Learning Loss as Civic Loss Report: Addressing the Generational Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Youth Democratic Engagement
In fall 2022, the RHF partnered with the Samara Centre for Democracy to better understand the current state of youth civic engagement in Canada and to use these findings and recommendations to help inform RHF’s ongoing work with Forum for Young Canadians. The report Learning Loss as Civic Loss: Addressing the Generational Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Youth Democratic Engagement was produced in February 2022. It seeks to help maximize Forum’s impact and strengthen its unique value within a broader ecosystem of youth engagement that champions a healthy democratic culture through its programming and inspires young people to become effective change agents for their communities and country. While this report’s recommendations and calls to action are instructive to the future of Forum for Young Canadians, they will also be of interest more broadly to organizations and citizens concerned about youth engagement.
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