I think there are a couple. One is that young people—not as a whole, but many young people—don't see themselves as employable. Therefore, they opt to remove themselves from the job market.
Our platform around social enterprise—and again Youth Opportunities Unlimited is a national platform—delivers in many communities across Canada. A social enterprise platform, when it's used as a training vehicle, can be game changing for those folks, because it takes them away from having to demonstrate how they're going to help a company make money and fit into a game that they don't necessarily know how to play, and allows them to learn about their passions, their hopes and their sense of what they enjoy. I think when we serve sometimes vulnerable or marginalized youth, we forget that as much as the great programs are there for them and the employment opportunities can be there for them, those still have to be connected to their dreams and their hopes for themselves.
“Any job is a good job” and so on is true in a lot of cases, but they need to see that, and it can't just be lectured to them. They have to start feeling as though that's part of it, because starting a new job can be really scary if you've never worked before. The social enterprise platform allows for that and allows them to start seeing that they are part of this economy and that there are next steps for them. The success rates of those programs for us are just phenomenal. Typically the most marginalized populations we serve are the ones who do exceptionally well at that. They excel because of the confidence, and Sam's letter is a testament to that.