The Youth Engagement Program has been an initiative that has brought much pride to the SOTG 2022 Conference. This program has had much attention from panelists and other stakeholders who acknowledge the level of quality, depth and engagement of the participants in their interventions and conversations with Education for Sustainable Development practitioners.
In sharing the learnings from this experience and to make these practices and takeaways available to the York University community and to other educational institutions, it is hoped to promote and engage Youth as active stakeholders on equal footing in more events and activities.
According to our partner Crossing Borders Education, some of the specific outcomes and learnings of the Youth Engagement Program include
- 20% of participants were engaged in the discussions and facilitations at the conference.
- The vast majority of the students (80-90%) described deep intercultural experiences; around 20% stepped into leadership and expressed a shift in their interest of career choices.
- The rewording of conference materials to inspire Youth of diverse backgrounds (e.g. Toronto Declaration, Conference Themes), co-creation of peer videos and multimedia to be used on social media.
- Communication tools like MailChimp proved to be efficient to send content to thousands of students but these tools are often not effective for establishing personal connections. An important takeaway from this program is that in order to establish strong and meaningful connections among Youth, it is imperative to establish a peer engagement approach.
- Students seemed to feel more confident to engage on social platforms when they were in small groups. As contrast, students seemed to emotionally freeze in larger groups. This suggests that virtual discussion and relationship building need a technical scaffolding to support interactive programming.
- Students need support in intentional development of diverse skill sets that need to be practiced simultaneously (e.g., relationship building is supported by humility and empathy, while delivery is supported by perseverance and courage). Interactive peer design and technical infrastructure are needed to support small communities of practice in large groups.
