The delivery model is that we represent and support 38 organizations across the country, located at universities and colleges. They are their own organizations within those institutions, and they hire undergraduate students to go out in communities and deliver programs.
Our role at the national level is to provide funding for those initiatives to provide support, training, and resource and content development. We do advocacy work to make sure there is understanding of why youth engagement is important, because often we get trapped in “K to 12 is a provincial jurisdiction issue”. We do work in schools to support what's happening, but this is skill development and workforce development outside of school. It's really filling the gap that exists within the formal school system.
In Yukon, for example, we would provide funding to Yukon College, who we've partnered with. Yukon College then sends teams out into communities—last year it was eight communities but they want to be in all 14—and they deliver programming in schools. They then go back in the summer and deliver summer experiences. The goal of Yukon College, of which we're very supportive, is looking at.... This is all done in partnership with community-based funds, the community leadership needs, and what they've identified as important.
We don't develop a program in Ottawa that then gets delivered in Yukon or in Nunavut, or in P.E.I. for that matter. It's very much a locally customized program that is delivered in partnership with communities. The funding we're asking for, which is essentially $9 million a year for five years, is going to scale to all the programs across the country. We're doing programming in rural, remote communities, and with communities that are having major socio-economic issues. We're doing that at no cost to the community or to the parents.
That funding enables.... We have the network already to do this very quickly. We have the relationships, the trust, the credibility and the content. Our model is incredibly sustainable. More money in is a lot more youth engaged in building those skills.
You saw that we do a lot of work to quantify the impact of our programs both to provide accountability, and also so we know how to have the deepest possible impact. We wanted to quantify the economic impact as well, so that people in decision-making positions understand how important engagement is at a K to 12 level.