Five Good Ideas on working with youth to bridge the democratic deficit

Elizabeth McIsaac: Today, we are talking about working with youth to bridge the democratic deficit. Youth play a critical role in contributing to our democracy and it's time that we worked with them better to address the democratic deficits that are emerging in our society. In this session, Sharif Mahdy and Kwaku Agyemang will explore good promising and emerging practices and engaging youth to act on the issues of our time. They will walk us through how adult-youth partnerships can be effective relationships in strengthening our democracy. Sharif is the CEO of the Students Commission of Canada, a national intergenerational charitable organization that works with a wide range of groups to make sure young people's voices are heard and put into action. Sharif has been with the SCC since 2010. Kwaku is the lead of production and content creation at the SCC. He's also an alumnus of the SCC's programming, including the #CanadaWeWant youth movement. Thank you both for joining me today. The last five years have not been kind, well, not really to anyone, but in particular to youth. All kinds of factors were working against them. The pandemic interrupted some really important times of development. The housing market hits them harder than most. Social media is a complex landscape to navigate. Social isolation seems prevalent, and so how do we begin to bring this group, this part of our community and our society into the conversation. Sharif, let's begin with you. What should be the goal of youth engagement? Sharif Mahdy: What's really important to remember is that youth engagement is both a process and an outcome. The process of engaging youth can lead to all sorts of positive outcomes for young people on the individual, social, and system level. And it's important for us to have a bit of a common definition on what engagement means. For us at the Centre of Excellence for Youth Engagement, we define youth engagement as the meaningful and sustained participation of a young person in an activity with a focus outside of self. Some of our researchers at the centre are describing this as youth generativity, the idea of leaving a better world for future generations. We've also discovered through our work that young people are particularly well suited and particularly well primed to leave a better future. Most of our research tends to focus on older adults, 60 plus, who are at the end of their lives, who are thinking that this is the time to leave legacy. But we are seeing wide ranges of young people as young as 10 who are really believing that they have a role to play now in leaving that legacy. So when we involve them in the solutions that feel overwhelming and complex, and when we bring them as partners and engage them as part of a process to address the issues that you've brought up, like housing affordability, social justice, health inequities, democratic issues, polarization, we start to see that not only is this process getting their voice on topics and checking off boxes in terms of we've engaged you and we've said that you're part of the process, but that process of contributing and feeling like you're part of something larger than yourself also leads to really positive outcomes for young people. On the individual level, they start to feel as if they have a say. Their self-efficacy improves. On the social level their communities get better because they're designing more relevant programs for the youth who they serve. And on a system level, the policies and legislation and other ways in which we make decisions in this country, they are improved because they are more reflective of what youth are saying about these specific topics. So for us, it's really a process and an outcome at the same time. Elizabeth McIsaac: You used one word at the beginning, which was meaningful engagement. And we often say that we that in to make it more legitimate, more authentic. Can you take it apart a bit? What is meaningful? Sharif Mahdy: For us meaningful is that it's not happening in a tokenizing way, that it's not happening as something for show, that they are active and sustained partners in the process of addressing whatever the issue is that they are interested in exploring. So there's a few concrete ways in which we flesh this out. First of all, duration. It's not just a one-time consultation; it's a relationship-based approach. And we've actually pinpointed that you need to engage a young person for at least six months on a topic in order for some of these really positive long-term outcomes to stick. The other part of it is they have to know that their voice is going somewhere. So they have to know that what they've been working on is going to lead to some sort of change. They're not necessarily thinking that the change has to happen immediately. The number one complaint or issue we hear in some of the work that we've done or supported is less around the decision-makers saying no to what they've brought up and more around this idea of being ghosted after they've contributed their life and soul to this process. It's actually okay for us to say no on certain things or to say that that will take time, but we have to provide regular reporting back, right? Meaningful also means layering engagement on three levels. We have to think about how an individual's life trajectory is going to change because of engagement, how that might influence their peers on a social level and how what we're doing with them is going to result in some type of system change. When you don't have those three levels at play, you're not going to have meaningful engagement in the long run. Elizabeth McIsaac: Right, thank you. Sharif Mahdy: To build off of your question around meaningful, young people have also shared with us this desire to have a clear process and values that ground what engagement should look like. It doesn't matter necessarily what the values are as long as they're pro-social in nature and they're not violent, and there is a set of concrete values that are binding and supporting the young people through their engagement journey. For us, we have really defined these as a process and an outcome. Respect, listen, understand, and communicate. Respect for young people and their capacity to change the world. Respect for all people and the unique gifts they carry within. For us, respect is not earned; it is granted. It is immediately granted regardless of who you are and what your life situation is. Trust is earned. Respect is granted. When we respect, we can listen. We listen not only with our ears, but with our heart and with all our senses. We listen for spoken word, for written word, for silences, and for deeds. When we listen, we can put ourselves in the shoes of others, we can understand. We can disagree without being disagreeable. And with those three pillars in place, we then communicate the changes that we want to see together. We just published this protocol last year, these values as a leading practice for belonging and inclusion and anti-oppression, specifically around addressing and reinforcing social cohesion and addressing social polarization. When you have these pillars as a container for your engagement, you can have really difficult conversations without putting people into echo chambers or into corners. And I'm going to invite Kwaku now to share an example from a project we just wrapped up last year, called Hearing Unheard Moments where we worked together to bridge differences and address polarizing comments and issues that were emerging from misinformation, disinformation, and other kind of online harms that were happening. Kwaku? Kwaku Agyemang: Thank you, Sharif. The Hearing Unheard Moments project was a great opportunity to bring young people across different spectrums to really discuss and have open and honest conversations as we dive deeper and explore our social polarization. So Dr. Heather Lawford and us here at the Students Commission conducted some research on the life stories of former extremists and youth social activists. And through that experience we learned that when young people tend to feel unheard, they were excluded for their thoughts and opinions and their real-life experiences that led to youth being coined as extremists. Whereas those that are youth that are looked at as activists, as leaving behind a legacy, they were afforded more opportunities to feel heard, to have their voice included, and were meaningfully engaged. And the overall hope of the Hearing Unheard Moments project was to ensure that we are able to bring youth together to have these conversations as opposed to everybody living in their own silos and to also co-create together. When we looked at the four pillars — respect, listen, understand, and communicate — we were able to successfully have those conversations instead of young people feeling defensive or offended. We were able to have those conversations in a respectful way where young people felt like they were listened to, they were understood, and had the opportunity to communicate through co-creating projects. I had the opportunity of co-creating with a young person, who tends to identify more on the extreme side, some products that spoke to relevant themes in today's society, such as DeepFakes, AI, bots and so forth. That created a lot more opportunity to spark conversations among young people. And so looking at where we can bring the collective conversation together so that young people don't feel like they're on the outside, how we bring them in to have their voices heard. And the four pillars played a very key role in making a project like HUM, Hearing Unheard Moments successful. Elizabeth McIsaac: That's great. That's a really great description of how it played out. And then also the result of it, so the process, but importantly the outcome as equally important. How important is it in your mind, Kwaku, to have all of those principles and protocols and the process really clearly articulated at the front end? Is that step number one in putting this in place? Kwaku Agyemang: 100%. It's step number one in all facets. Even me personally growing up, learning the four pillars, I was not staff, I was a young person at the conference, and I was like, "Wow, respect, listen, understand, communicate." And it wasn't just read to us, it wasn't just, "Hey, these are the four pillars, make sure to abide by them by." It was, "Hey, here are the four pillars. Here are what they mean, and here are some activities." So even putting in activities so we can fully truly live and breathe what the four pillars are, is key, such as human sculpture activity. Setting those guidelines and making young people feel a part of those guidelines is key. So not only, "Hey, here are the four pillars." We've led activities where we've said, "Hey, this week we are doing these activities, we're at this conference. How do you see the four pillars manifesting throughout this week?" And then young people can go and stick up call cards, go and stick up sticky notes and say, "Hey, I'd like to be respected this way. These are some of the ways I like to communicate. This is how it's easy for me to empathize and understand, and these are other forms of listening that we haven't spoke about that we think would be important for our space this week." Elizabeth McIsaac: That's great. Putting out the outline and then having participants colour it in to give it meaning to them and also ownership of the process. That's great. Thank you. Sharif Mahdy: The process of building the guidelines is the first step of engagement. They're having a say in terms of what their community and environment will look like, and they're able to kind of share what their ideas are about respect and all of these different pieces. The Hearing Unheard Moments project Kwaku just summarized in two minutes was a year's worth of work. Meaningful duration is important. Time. Trust-building with youth, grounding in this container of value. So you can have very difficult conversations, but disagreeable topics is really important. And for us, what also bridges this is this idea of intergenerational partnership and mutuality within the intergenerational partnership. So understanding that regardless of where you are generationally, you have something to learn from one another. Just because you're a young person doesn't mean you're more educated around technology. I think I noticed so much when I'm in older spaces or in spaces with other adults who are not youth. I'm- Elizabeth McIsaac: Sharif. Just to clarify, are we in an older space right now? Sharif Mahdy: I don't know. I don't know who's here right now on the call, but let me just say — and I'm part of the group; I'm not trying to make it sound like I'm not older here — when we're in those adult spaces, I often hear, "Well, let's young people are the ones who know the technology better than anyone else." Actually, no generation in history has ever experienced technology in this way. There is no one who is an expert on what we are currently going through with regards to technology, as an example, right? This notion that young people have so much to teach us about this is a bit of a false choice. Also this idea that we sometimes see in our culture, particularly on Turtle Island, of older people are out to pasture and they have nothing to contribute anymore. We see that so much in our discourse in terms of our media, and that could not be further from the truth. In our culture and in SCC, we have all of the generations working together, including Baby Boomers, and folks who are older than Baby Boomers. We have Gen Xers, we have Millennials, we have Gen Z, Gen Alpha now, and someone just named Gen Beta, which is throwing me up for a curve as a new generation that just started this year apparently. We don't have Gen Beta yet because they're zero, but we have all these generations and they're working mutually together. On our team, we have an elders council that advises us and that is constantly grounded in teaching us about different ways of knowing. It's a mix of Indigenous and non-Indigenous elders who are firmly integrated in terms of our programs. They bring culture to the space, they bring wisdom to the space, but they also have an open mind to learning from young people how to adapt the culture to what young people are experiencing in the here and now. So that's one component. Oftentimes we see folks say, "Okay, we can't have the youth in the space because they're not ready." So the other component is to start with youth from the beginning or let them figure it out on their own. Youth have a lot of tremendous innovation that needs to be bridged with experience. In order for the systems change to happen, or for them to have their voice go somewhere, they need adult stakeholders to help them navigate those spaces. So it's really important to kind of drop adult-led notions and youth-led notions and think about this work of youth engagement as an intergenerational exercise that is bridging the magic of all of these different people. And I'll share a really quick example with you on the topic of DeepFakes. I won't name the age, but I'll just say they were a Baby Boomer who taught the Gen Zers about DeepFakes because the Baby Boomer had lived in a time where that was easily picked out, whereas Gen Zers have only this type of bombardment of misinformation and disinformation. And the Baby Boomer was the one who taught this lesson and didn't do it in a patronizing or hierarchical way, but through this concept of mutual respect and mutual kind of listening and learning. On the flip side, these Gen Zers have been teaching this Baby Boomer all sorts of new things in our culture, specifically around how to make sure that the platforms we're offering are relevant to youth, how to make sure that our proposals are grounded in youth voices. So it's not just this kind of adult teacher model that I'm trying to prepare, trying to explain. It's this mutual kind of reinforcing benefit. Elizabeth McIsaac: And so that's steeped, that's steeped in respect going back to the principle that it's about building that respectful equality almost in the relationship so that there's not a hierarchy there, but a real equality of engagement. Sharif Mahdy: Real equality of engagement. When we talk concretely about working with youth to bridge the democratic deficit, we have laid out what we call the TRUST framework as our model. And for us it's still not published; it’s an emerging practice. But for us the way in which these mutual respectful process and outcome focused conversations happen is through the TRUST framework, which stands for five commitments: taking initiative and being curious, making sure that you are constantly curious about what young people are saying, constantly curious about what your peers are saying and constantly curious about what others in your world intergenerationally are saying. Reinforcing a sense of community. Our four pillars provide a guideline for how our communities, whether in our youth programs or even in our employment context as an employer working with youth, work together. Uncovering community boundaries. Okay, it's great to have these values, but how do they show up? How do we make sure that it's clear what works in our community and what doesn't? And making sure those boundaries are really, really clear. The fourth commitment that I think is the most important and that is not being trained in young people in a lot of spaces that they're currently in, is supporting healthy conflict, how to engage in a conflict of ideas without it turning into something that polarizes or puts us into echo chambers. We talked about a great example on the intergenerational piece. I'm not saying it's all roses and peaches. We have so much conflict of ideas in our program. Some of what Kwaku just referenced in terms of the Hearing Unheard Moments project, to get to a point where we had products to produce, there was a ton of conflict, but again, it happened in a way that wasn't toxic of me posting about you online and you not seeing it and then us treating each other like we were online and not treating each other like we were human to human. It became a conflict of ideas grounded in this mutual respect and this idea that we had something to learn from one another. In my role as a CEO of the organization, we did an activity where I asked the team, what are all the rumours that you're hearing? Throw them onto the floor, let's talk about them and we'll work through them together and work through them through this framework. Was it easy, was it enjoyable? No, but it moved the organization forward in terms of the process and the outcome that I mentioned at the beginning. And I'll throw it over to Kwaku to share some examples of mutuality and conflict that you've experienced as well fitting with some of these ideas so far. Kwaku Agyemang: The way I try to look with my peers to understand conflict is we're not all raised the same. We don't all consume the same type of content. It's completely normal for us to have different opinions and disagree. And starting with that as well has been key, to say, "Hey, nothing's wrong. Nothing has to be perfect. Nothing should be perfect" to prepare a proper ground to have those conversations. One conflict that we don't talk about a lot as we co-created products, for example, with the HUM project was safe spaces. "Hey, this is a safe space, nobody will be judged. Please feel free to share your full thoughts on this one particular topic." And because we had done the four pillars early on in the week and everything, even while producing the content, there was still that hesitation to share their ideas. So it could be a conflict as well as a breakthrough in the sense that the four pillars did help to address the polarization in there, but there was even conflict at that point to say, "Hey, do I want to share this? Do I want my name to be attached to that?" And so that's a lot of the messiness that came about creating the content. So that's like a double-edged sword a bit where we had to fall back and say, "Hey, that's okay. Let's have more meaningful conversations to understand why you may feel this certain way about a topic," or “What changed throughout the week that made you feel to think twice about some of the beliefs you may have held before?” Sharif Mahdy: And I'll just emphasize the point here that what we've not been seen trained in some of our systems — and part of the deficit — is how to engage in this conflict of ideas, how to foster critical thinking, how to be okay with hearing beliefs and ideas that are completely different from your own without polarizing yourself into an echo chamber where you can't actually learn from where that belief may be coming from. And we have been hearing all sorts of things that for us personally as human beings in our own beliefs are very challenging to sometimes hear. But what we've learned is that when we create these unheard moments for young people, if we push them away or we make them feel as if what they've shared is not from a place of value or we don't take initiative and be curious about where these young people's beliefs may be coming from, that we actually might be unintentionally pushing them outside of our society. We might be pushing them into groups and into ideas and into belief structures that may be very harmful for them, for their communities and for our society down the road. So our job has been to immediately grant respect even for ideas that feel very challenging to hear and then spend time listening and understanding where these ideas are coming from. And one of the resources we've shared with you are the HUM products. We explored Quebec's language laws. We explored left-wing versus right-wing ideologies. We explored the dehumanization of newcomers and immigrants. Very difficult topics; very different beliefs. In the container of the four pillars, people who had very different opinions are now friends as a result of the process and have learned from one another and maybe have softened those opinions or shifted a little bit as a result of the process. So that's an important piece to this as well. And it leads to our final good idea, which is that- Elizabeth McIsaac: Before you get to the final good idea, I feel like we missed the T in trust, you said it was an acronym and we got T-R-U-S. We got to supporting healthy conflict. Sharif Mahdy: We got TRUS but not TRUST. Thank you. Elizabeth McIsaac: What's the last T? Sharif Mahdy: Oh, Kwaku named it kind of implicitly in terms of avoiding perfectionism and thriving in the pursuit of excellence. We need to avoid perfection spirals. I think sometimes we are trained to be perfect rather than excellent. And excellent means we are going to make mistakes along the way. We're going to learn things that are difficult. Perfect means we're going to try to avoid mistakes, but we might not leave a container for anyone else's voices to be heard. So we really have landed on excellence. And the only way we can be thriving in the pursuit of excellence versus perfection, the only way we can be excellent is if we create mistakes. If we allow for ourselves to hear things that are really challenging to hear and don't try to perfectly box things in to prevent any risk from happening. Working with youth and working with anybody on these topics is risky. We're going to make mistakes and we need to be okay to make mistakes and avoid perfectionism spirals. So that's where the thrive and the pursuit of excellence comes from. Elizabeth McIsaac: And in a nutshell then, the democratic deficit is enabling that connectivity and that conversation to happen in a way that is non-polarizing ability to navigate through a place of solution. Sharif Mahdy: Exactly. And to be part of the solution. So, process is being part of the solution. The outcome is the solution, right? And the process of being involved in generating the solution can also lead to some of the outcomes that we're seeking as a society. So for us, the deficit that we're trying to address is this. First it is that young people don't get engaged and involved on these issues, and that's a deficit in and of itself. The second component is that the process for engaging in our democracy is eroding. And the process for being able to engage in healthy discourse is being challenged for all sorts of reasons. What we're offering here through these five good ideas is a model or an approach that we've tried over time that we think could be scaled and could help address some of the deficits we're currently experiencing. Elizabeth McIsaac: Great. That's great. Thank you. Idea number five? Sharif Mahdy: Yeah, thanks for the reminder because it would've been an awkward acronym without that final T. I think you've heard our point that we see youth as catalysts for systems change. And when we're working in partnership with them, if you track over history at great moments of systems change, youth are a critical component or catalyst for that over time. There's all sorts of social movements that resulted in meaningful and sustained systems change that were directly grounded in young people's voices and young people's push to see something change. And yes, sometimes the system responds by pushing back. I'm not necessarily saying that it is a linear progression. There's three steps forward and sometimes four steps back. Not going to make it sound like it's easy, but we are very kind of firmly committed to catalyzing and supporting young people's role in systems change. And so I'll share a quick example and then Kwaku will share an example as well. We’ve been involved in taking a rights-based approach to supporting youth who have experience with the child welfare systems in this country in redesigning those systems. In 2017 and 2018, we worked very closely with the Ministry of Children and Youth Services in Ontario to integrate young people into the design of the updated Child and Youth Family Services Act legislation. And young people had been pushing for that type of system change for many, many years and then were supported. And our role was to facilitate the conversation. They provided direct input into not only the legislation, but also the regulations that would implement the legislation. And one of the moments that really stood out for us was when the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child became enshrined into this piece of legislation as a result of young people's push. Now, has the system responded and completely changed since then? As I said, four steps forward, three steps backwards. However, the process of engaging them has resulted in some of the changes that we were hoping to see in terms of improved outcomes for the young people in the systems that they experience and engage in. And that is our kind of firm focus. These were young people who experienced the system and wanted to leave a better legacy for future generations. That is a very concrete example of how we're tapping into it. Kwaku, why don't you share an example on a project you catalyzed when you were a younger person around Nobody's Born a Racist 2.0. Can you share a little bit about how you tried to make some systems change happen or how you catalyze systems change with regards to racial equity? Kwaku Agyemang: Nobody’s Born a Racist 2.0 is a project that we've led at distance commission that means a lot to me. And just another example of a conflict I faced when I first came to a conference. I was born in Toronto and there was another young person from Alberta who said, "Oh, you're from Toronto and are you a part of a gang? Is that what it is?" That conversation today would've been just a few arguments over a comment section, and then I would've just retreated to my own echo chamber. The other individual would've retreated to their own other echo chamber, and that would've been it. But a project like Nobody's Born a Racist came in and really supported a healthy conversation. And me and that individual are still cool to this day over social media and we're able to exist in each other's space. Nobody's Born a Racist is a project that was pioneered in the 90s, and it was aimed at promoting equity and addressing racism among youth. And delegates participated in various projects including developing a guide to equity. And in 2020, we wanted to revitalize Nobody's Born a Racist into Nobody's Born a Racist 2.0. And a lot of that did surround the events around George Floyd's death and the many protests that were taking place in North America and globally. And we revitalized the project during the pandemic and organized a series of soul circles and the soul circles took place on Zoom. And the aim of those soul circles was to bring together Black staff, youth and partners to just have a space to discuss and talk about what these issues mean to us. How are we coping? And just having that shared safe space. And that project further evolved in taking a lot of those learnings from the conversations, the original Nobody's Born a Racist, and to take some Youth Take Charge Heritage Canada funding to develop a revamped toolkit that we're able to work in partnership with young people to develop, to lead these different workshops and opportunities across Canada in every province and territory. And so that was another example of how young people can come together to take learnings from a project that was done in the 90s, build upon it and further disseminate important learnings and research. And that's just another nugget of where intergenerational partnership takes place because that 2.0 project wouldn't have been successful without the guidance of leaders from the original Nobody's Born a Racist project in partnership, as well with our elders council. Elizabeth McIsaac: Great example. Thank you. All right. I'm going to guide you through the questions and I just remind everybody online to use the Q&A box. That's where I'm looking for the questions. We also had some people send some questions in advance. There's a couple questions around how do we, if we're in schools, so we're going to get to how do we do this within nonprofits, but there's a number of people online who are engaged with more formal institutional organizations. Are there ways of engaging youth and some of this kind of work that you're talking about within and across those kinds of institutional frames or sometimes barriers, sometimes they're open doors. Can you talk a little bit about that? Sharif Mahdy: So are you referring to the trying to integrate youth voice across various institutions like school boards, like school systems? Elizabeth McIsaac: I think it's school systems. I think there's a couple of people from U of T online. Just where there's more of the institutional limitations, constraints, but those can also be enablers in terms of being able to reach out to youth and able to provide platforms and spaces and so forth. So just a little bit of how to think about navigating that perhaps. Sharif Mahdy: We've done a lot of work with government and other institutions, businesses actually too, and other non-profit organizations. And in many cases folks feel like they have to reinvent the wheel on this and they have to create a whole structure. And the only model for this is a formal youth advisory council that has a certain kind of age requirement. That kind of setup. And what we would suggest is that you work with the folks who are good at bridging youth from their world into institutions. We certainly see ourselves as bridgers so I don't want this to sound self-fulfilling in the sense, but there are other organizations that are bridgers as well. But oftentimes people feel as if the youth, adult or intergenerational partnership has to happen with me beside the young person at all points in time. And one of the ways that we've kind of described that for our own staff is that some of them work 40 hours a week, and their youth program is one hour a week. It is their job to turn the gold they generate in that youth program one hour a week and use the remaining 40 hours of their week to do something with what they've heard from young people because the young people have only the capacity to give us one hour per week as an example. So that's one really concrete example that I would share. The other is that it can be appropriate to bring youth into adult spaces and adult into youth spaces, but to the very first question around duration and meaningfulness, the trust has to be there. We have had all sorts of institutions say, "I want to come in as an observer to your youth group and watch it happen." That is very creepy. To have someone come in as an observer who isn't integrated as part of the process, who isn't seen as part of the furniture, so to speak. That doesn't necessarily work. So in terms of bridging, sometimes what we have done is we have gone to an institution and said, "We really want youth voice on mental health and wellness." Let's just say that. "How can you do that? How can you get youth voice on this topic?" All right, well, we have a network of youth programs that are working on youth mental health and wellness. We'll figure out a way to generate some questions that we can bring to that space that's part of the regular structure of how they're engaging and tackling systems change. And we'll share with them that there's this organization that's interested in hearing from them on this particular topic because it's always better when our youth programs know their voice is going somewhere, and then we'll harvest what we hear into something that works for your institutional audiences. That's what we refer to as bridging. And that's a really important thing to do. Sometimes it's okay if the adults are meeting on their own about something and the youth are meeting on their own because of the nature of how our systems and structures are set up. But the question really to think about institutionally is how is that bridge being formed and how are we creating moments for youth and adults to sometimes meet on that bridge in ways that are safe for both of them? I think I saw a question about age. We tend to prioritize the definition of children and youth under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, specifically around articles 12 and 17, access to information to make decisions and a voice in decision-making.So we tend to prioritize 10- to 17-year-olds. And then we also include 18- to 25-year-olds in the mix depending on your life experience and your lived experience. All sorts of institutions put up barriers at 18 for liability purposes. Not that we ignore that, but we have worked out through our insurance and liability and even through our ethical informed consent processes that everything we're doing is underneath the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Canada has ratified. That is the legal basis of what we're doing in terms of liability. But some organizations fear that. So work with the organizations who have worked very hard at addressing these institutional barriers to help bridge that voice to the institution. 10 to 17. And it's not to say that youth advisory councils or youth advisory mechanisms are not necessarily effective, but they are not the sole activity for informing a voice. And they do tend to reach youth who tend to put their hands up. That's not always the case, but you tend not to get the full gamut of youth voice that you could be getting if you're trying to bridge a youth space rather than create an adult structure and then have youth join it. Elizabeth McIsaac: So that's a good segue to the question of how do you engage youth that aren't the ones putting their hand up? How do you bring them in? How does that selection, invitation, engagement begin? Sharif Mahdy: Yeah, so we prioritize working with a network of partners across the country. So we're national in scope. We prioritize working with a network of partners across the country who tend to be experts in reaching those youth who tend not to put their hands up. So a skateboard park in Prince Edward Island that we're partnered with or a core neighborhood youth co-op in Saskatoon, which is prioritized in one of the core neighborhoods and is a space where youth can come and get credits for school outside of the school system, but still connected to the school system but not the same as school? Is it a kind of community centre or space in Prince Albert Saskatchewan where we're bridging together Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth. Those are just a few of the examples. So we have tended to prioritize reaching youth who tend not to put their hands up through our network of partners, or we also have a physical presence in community where our workers are out there doing outreach and connecting with youth from community, not through school councils or students councils. Now, I want to be very clear. We don't exclude student council youth. That's not part of our first pillar of respect. We just try to make sure that the balance is 80% of youth who wouldn't put their hands up and 20% who would. Because if they are more than 20%, they tend to dominate the conversation. So you have to make sure that that ratio is pretty effective. And that's how we tend to reach, I call it, the nooks and crannies. Partners who know how to find youth in all the nooks and crannies of the country is our approach. Elizabeth McIsaac: There's a number of people from inside schools who are teaching students who are working with young people. Are there particular skills that teachers and others who are providing skills development for students, for young people to help them ensure that they are contributing to generations who are capable of dealing with conflict? You spoke so well about navigating this world of conflict and it's all around us. I think it's the most evident thing we know right now. So what are those skills? Can you point to some? Sharif Mahdy: Supporting healthy conflict is the fourth commitment. There's three things that have to happen first before you can get to healthy conflict. You have to foster a space of curiosity and initiative. And for us, that really means that we are fostering critical thinking and problem solving. So this notion of challenging beliefs and ideas in a safe way, that skill of critical thinking, I think in terms of the navigations that we're going to have to do around artificial intelligence, misinformation, disinformation, social polarization, all of the things that are occurring in online spaces that are very overwhelming for all people, but particularly young people to process. We as educators and as folks who are working with youth in youth programs outside of the formal education system, but are still playing a role in education of young people as humans and citizens, we have a big job on our hands in terms of fostering critical thinking. If you can't work through the different types of information and misinformation that you are experiencing, then you're not going to be well-equipped to potentially engage in the healthy conflict that's happening. So what's very important is to ... We've seen with some of the polarizing topics, some educators gravitate, and I know there's a lot of risk associated with this, and I'm summing up 30 years of work in two minutes with what I say, so it's not going to sound as easy as I make it. But we've worked with some educators who have told us that they're creating in their classroom spaces to work through challenging topics with this container. And some classrooms have adopted the four pillars as an approach and container for this. We've also heard from some educators that they're being told from a top-down perspective do not engage in any discourse or discussion around polarizing topics. Just focus on the math and the sciences and do that. Our kind of thinking is that whether you can do it in your educational space or not, work with the bridgers. Again, if the youth can't do it in your classroom, is there a bridger within your community or a partner within your community who can create that safe space for that conversation to happen and for that critical thinking to be fostered and for diverse viewpoints to be engaged within a non-threatening and non-polarizing way? That is some of how we've been able to do it. Some classrooms we've worked with have adopted the four pillars and have made it a part of their process and a part of their way of engaging. And others have bridged with partners who can create that space for young people to work through some of the difficult topics that they're experiencing in online and offline spaces. Elizabeth McIsaac: Great, thank you. Another question is coming back to the intergenerational approach, which I think really appeals in trying to think through what that can produce because it feels like a very creative and innovative space to have. What spaces can be used as regular platforms for continued engagement, co-creation and dialogue in the Canadian context? Where should we be looking to try to generate that kind of engagement? Sharif Mahdy: Yeah, great question. I think, and Kwaku, I think we'll do a mutual partnership on this one, if you don't mind. We'll learn from each other here, but I'll just quickly pop in. I think we are over-regulating in-person spaces and under-regulating online spaces. So I think we're thinking that online is the platform. What we're seeing from our research, especially in the past five years, is a deep well of young people wanting to be connected. And I don't mean connected to the internet, connected to other human beings in a healthy relational way. So whatever platform approach you take, whether it's technological or it's an in-person or it's a conference or it's the ... whatever that methodology is, do not discount the importance of human relationship and human relatedness, particularly around this idea of mutuality and reinforcement. It can only happen with a human-to-human relationship. There's also some pretty interesting research out there that one consistent caring adult in a young person's life who is not a parent or caregiver or guardian can have such a tremendous impact on all sorts of outcomes for young people. So don't underestimate if you're an adult and you have a relationship with young people in your life, the impact that you're having and you might not know about it until 15 years later and they come up and tell you. So I would just say when I hear the word platform, I think sometimes we go internet or digital. And I don't think that's necessarily the premise of the question, but it's just so important that what we're seeing in the past five years is a huge need for actual human relatedness and human relationships. Kwaku, I'll throw it to you to share any other points on that. Kwaku Agyemang: If we're being honest, a lot of us as adults, young adults, our engagement, our interactions with young people is through work. It's our job. And so we look at it as our online life or online spaces we occupy. And I think, Sharif, you really hit the nail on the head with under regulating online spaces because we look at online as that's our personal private life. Let's just keep it there. My interactions with the young people for work just should remain in person or that space where I feel like there is a lot of realities happening for young people online. There's a strong piece of adult relationship when I was growing up in school where the teachers that meant a lot to me were the ones that would look out for me, drop me off home when they knew there was trouble in the neighbourhood or take me out to get Chinese food or just stay a little bit longer after school to tutor meant a lot. As those who work in the system, we have to figure out a way not to be afraid of online spaces and interacting with young people online just so we can make sure we're adequately intervening when it's important. And so yeah, that's where I would say we really need to understand, it's like how do we regulate in a proper way that isn't not cool for young people, but we're really just engaging and interacting and intervening with young people online so that we could continue to be supportive allies. Elizabeth McIsaac: That's a great answer. Thank you. Thank you both. We are coming close to the end. There is a question, I think you've kind of answered it. I think it's a straightforward ... I think it's going to be a one-word answer. Does the SCC and other registered groups, will you work with other nonprofits to figure out how to do this, provide advice? Sharif Mahdy: The short answer is yes. And the medium answer is we made a decision a long time ago that there's so much good work happening with youth in this country that we don't need to replace that. We just need to reinforce or strengthen it. So we have as a stated priority that a key part of our raison d'etre is to strengthen the network of organizations that are serving youth. And so a lot of our work actually focuses on building others' capacity to do what we've just described. Elizabeth McIsaac: Right. Of course, there's more questions coming in because it's 1:58, so I'm going to apologize to those whose questions did not get answered and there were many questions not answered. But I think that as with all five good ideas, this is the beginning of conversations that can continue back at your nonprofit around the tables where you are. I think there was just so many great ideas today about how to think about bringing youth into those conversations with those pillars, with those pillars of respect, of listening, of understanding and communicating that this really gives you the guardrails for how to do this and to do it well. So I want to thank both of you, Sharif, Kwaku. You were just full of great ideas today and great examples from the work. I mean, I think that always gives so much more texture when you're able to talk about how it played out, how difficult circumstances were navigated, and you got to the other side. So thank you for sharing all of that.