Career Development through Community Service Learning
Faculty
Dr. Alba Agostino and Dr. Omar Lugan
City branch
Recreation and Culture Services
Student ideas:
All Youth Voices
The main goal is to establish a working group within the Oshawa Youth Council that will provide an outlet for youth voices that come from the priority neighbourhoods. This working group will take a bottom-up approach that provides an outlet for youth voices to be heard on matters that concern them. The project involves a community broker from the priority neighbourhood or has the experience and professional knowledge of a bottom-up perspective when working with this vulnerable population and will facilitate each session with youth from G.L. Roberts. This information will then be presented to the Oshawa Youth Council and inputted into their community development and programming. Each of these sessions will discuss different approaches that will involve the engagement of the Oshawa Youth Council's priority youth. Although our project does not specifically focus on adjusting any policies from the city of Oshawa, we are essentially implementing a working group within the Oshawa Youth Council that will address youth voices from the priority neighbourhoods. With this in mind, we plan on implementing this working group to capture a more holistic approach when addressing youth matters within the community.
The Need for Youth Involvement
The City of Oshawa provided the task of developing ideas in order to promote engagement to Oshawa youth. They expressed that engagement is something that they have been having difficulty when it comes to youth becoming involved with the Oshawa Youth Council. When it comes to maximizing the engagement of youth in the Oshawa community, one of the main issues affecting it is being able to reach out to everyone regardless of their socioeconomic status. In times of the COVID-19 pandemic, everything has been converted to virtual communication and promotion. It utilizes the current technology that is available and is a very effective way of reaching out to many people. This proposed solution will include creating an Oshawa Youth Council newsletter that is designed by the youth participants themselves. This newsletter will have important upcoming dates for programs that will be running for children to attend. It will include a small explanation of what the program is about and the benefits of going. It will be provided to families in both a paper version and an email version. It is important for the newsletter to be sent out as both because then it gives all families the chance to receive it, no matter if they have internet access or not. Youth will have the ability to decide what is most important and useful to be included in these documents which allows for youth’s voices to lead other youth in Oshawa. For this project to be successful, the schools in the city must be contacted and asked to partner with the council to hand out physical copies of the newsletter in classrooms. Having the support of the local areas in Oshawa as well as high priority neighborhood schools such as Lakeview, Gibb West, Downtown, Central Park and Beatrice North are some areas that it would be beneficial to create strong connections with, which would be imperative in successfully implementing the physical copies of the newsletter. Similarly, an email subscription list will be made and added to consistently and an email version of the newsletter will be sent out virtually. The main way to implement non-media advertising in this plan is to use a billboard. The goal is to once again have youth in the council decide what is most important to be displayed on this billboard. The billboard will be placed in a high traffic area in one of Oshawa’s priority neighbourhoods. The goal of this unique form of advertisement is to provide general resources and Youth Council information to youth all across Oshawa that may not have access to technology. By increasing engagement of youth in Oshawa by using our proposed solutions, youth will gain structure in their leisure time, continue to develop social skills as well as feel a sense of purpose in their community.
The Eye Catching Effect
This project will take approximately six months to complete and is titled “The Eye-Catching Effect”. Youth living in priority neighborhoods experiencing challenges and hardships as a result of living in low income households, experiencing low health outcomes and have access to fewer educational services are the primary target. The Oshawa Youth Council strives to give the young population a voice and an opportunity to express their thoughts and feelings. However, the OYC is currently experiencing challenges in engagement. To combat these challenges, this project has proposed a variety of solutions to communicate with youth to promote engagement. With the assistance of a social media expert, a proper utilization/merging of the present social media accounts of OYC to trending youth platforms would be done without contravening corporate regulations. Additionally, this project will connect with youth and parents who do not have Internet access through the ads, print media, posters, flyers and newsletters. The print media will be distrusted at schools, libraries and community centers within priority neighborhoods as well as advertised on the outside of buses running the priority routes neighborhood routes. The goal of this project is to increase engagement in the OYC through utilizing a variety of media styles. Encouraging youth engagement within the OYC has the potential to create growth, development and empower change within the priority neighborhoods of Oshawa.
Reach and Impact
The solution we are presenting to the Oshawa city staff in response to the challenge question presented is the “Reach & Impact, a civic engagement program.” This program will be run by youth, in partnership with adults, and will include civic engagement education, social media promotion, and a volunteering component. The implementation of the program will include four steps. This project is informed by academic literature sources on youth and civic engagement, and it rests in the assumption that the civic engagement program will maximize effectiveness. An important feature of this engagement project is that it will also teach youth about civics, the importance of civic engagement, and give them an opportunity to apply what they have learned. Phase One: Introduction and Outline of Program for the Oshawa Youth Council. Phase 2: Establishing Partnerships within the Community. Phase Three: Program Design and Development. Phase Four: Implementation of Civic Engagement Program.
