2021 YOUTH ACTION FUND GRANTEES
Project Descriptions
Finding Our Power Together
Finding Our Power Together – Young Leaders Circle
$100,000
The project aim is to grow and cultivate a Young Leaders Circle. The Young Leaders Circle proposes to implement initiatives that contribute to the revitalization of Indigenous cultural practices while gaining skills that ground them in their culture and provide new opportunities for youth to work together and celebrate Indigenous perspectives and worldviews. They will help Indigenous young people realize their own priorities and goals and gain access to various supports. Young Leaders will achieve their goals through planning, developing, implementing, facilitating, and reporting on programs and services they identify as important to them.
Justice Fund Toronto
Justice Fund
$100,000
The Justice Fund helps create opportunities for youth in communities in conflict with the law through the co-creation of specialized educational programming, supporting existing community-led initiatives & non-restrictive funding collaborations. These engagements inform our system reforms, particularly within the philanthropic sector & criminal justice system. Over the next few months their campaigns & government collaborations will help build a more equitable sector and improve institutions.
Stolen From Africa / Volé D'Afrique
Level Up Project: Knowledge, Voice, Action in Education
$100,000
The Level Up Project is a 35-week, social-emotional, academic advocacy program for Black and marginalized students, aged 11-18, and their families in high-poverty neighbourhoods. Through peer leadership training and workshops, youth will explore topics such as dream-building, mental & emotional health, relationships, networking & community development, stress management, financial literacy, decision-making, social responsibility and systems change. In collaboration with school and community-based staff, this project will strengthen relationships, resource and service-support systems in local schools and communities to increase youth and family access to advocacy and efficacy skills to combat anti-Black racism and exclusion.
Child Welfare PAC
From Care to Fair
$98,000
From Care to Fair will support social mobility for current and former youth in care by reducing barriers to post-secondary education. According to the available academic data, post-secondary credentials comprise the only evidence-based pathway that systematically levels the playing field for people raised in foster care. The project supports colleges and universities in the creation, implementation, and messaging of tuition free study opportunities for this group. The project builds on Child Welfare PAC's existing work that has resulted in 252+ tuition free opportunities at 20 schools in 5 provinces. Foster children deserve a fair chance at life.
Ontario Children’s Advocacy Coalition
Building Up – Readiness Building and Navigating Transitions Survival Guide
$100,000
The goal of the project is for the Capacity Building Navigation Guide to be used by lived experts, child welfare organizations and youth serving organizations, with the potential to be used nation-wide as an accessible tool. It will be developed by hired lived experts, and will translate what they have heard throughout the Readiness Indicators work into a usable tool to increase the confidence and successful outcomes of lived experts. The tool will be a source of self-guided education that can champion self-empowerment, self-actualization and also be used by organizations and agencies in order to co-design and build capacity of youth they serve. The development of this tool will be informed by approximately 100 young people through the provincial work and member-reviewed by the lived expert broader community, both provincially and on a national level.
Urban Alliance on Race Relations
REBuilding the Education System
$100,000
The REBuilding the Education System project seeks to rebuild racial equity in the education system and create systemic change. With the funding provided through this grant, we hope to hire 6 to 8 of youth as part-time youth outreach staff (four at a time) from communities negatively impacted by the education system to work directly with school boards in the Greater Toronto Area- Toronto, York, and Peel district school boards - to build meaningful systemic change through advocacy, research, and policy work. Youth hired to organize and deliver this project will be those who have previously faced barriers.
Tamil Canadian Centre for Civic Action
Open Doors Project (ODP)
$25,000
Through the Open Doors Project (ODP), TYM (Tamil Youth in Motion) aims to provide a space for Tamil youth in the Scarborough community who have faced suspension or expulsion at schools by providing educational resources, restorative toolkits, community support, and mentorship. ODP will provide an outlet for youth to give back to the community and acquire new skills as part of a restorative justice process. The project’s aim is to combine early and ongoing interventions to promote positive youth development and to reintegrate them back into the community by encouraging open dialogue between students, schools, and parents in order to pursue healthy solutions.
