The Canadian Urban Institute wants to ask Toronto youth the big questions: what city issues matter most to young people? How are youth inspired to make changes in their cities? And what are the best avenues for raising awareness and getting the word out? Their upcoming initiative Project YU is trying to answer those questions, and CUI’s latest focus groups are talking to young people directly about how they want to shape their cities.
Project YU, which was created with the help of a Toronto Foundation Vital Ideas Grant, is a youth engagement channel. Its intention is to create both more education around what civic engagement looks like, and more opportunities for youth ages 15 to 25 to participate in civic process. It's CUI's goal to get input from youth on both issues they want to engage in, and how to best spread the message. The project, which is now launched, is still working towards its final outputs, but CUI and Project YU want to construct the end result with as much youth input as possible; hence the focus groups.
The participants were a diverse group of young people, many already with plenty of urban engagement experience. One young man declared that he would like to someday be the mayor of Oshawa; others are recent graduates of urban planning or urban studies programs; still others sit on youth advisory boards and work at City Hall. Their common ground was a passion for identifying what areas the city needs to improve to better engage with youth, and a general consensus that, to quote one participant, Toronto is “pretty damn good.” They discussed a wide range of topics, including whether or not condos are the suburbs of the future, “the fine line between policy and politics,” and how people of colour fit in small towns.
“We see this as being a long-term program at CUI, one that is informed and driven by Project YU youth where we develop communication tools and an annual Project YU event that helps give youth the tools and information they need to be active urban citizens,” says Shannon Clark, Communications Director at CUI. They have plans for events, more focus groups, social media strategies, and a blog. “Ultimately our goal is to help Toronto’s youth better understand and have an impact on Toronto’s urban policy issues.” This group of well-informed youth people may just be the key to help Project YU figure out exactly how to deliver that goal.