Our Commitment to Youth

OUR COMMITMENT TO YOUTH

Young people are at the heart of social justice and social change and play a pivotal role in communities here in Nova Scotia, Canada, and around the world. Coady Institute provides knowledge-sharing, experiential learning, and education to support the aspirations of youth leaders as they seek opportunities and rise to challenges such as enhancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and decolonization; building a sustainable environment, and strengthening local economies.

At Coady Institute, we have developed a wide range of youth programs that offer learning opportunities for young leaders to develop their capacity for citizen action towards a more just world. Through the StFX DiscoverBox Sandbox and the Centre for Employment Innovation (CEI), we work to strengthen entrepreneurial and employment equity so all Nova Scotians, and participants from communities beyond the province, have fair opportunity to achieve their full livelihood and leadership potential. The Pathy Foundation Fellowship program offers students from Bishop University, McGill University, University of Ottawa, Queen’s University, and St. Francis Xavier University the opportunity for the development of initiatives in communities around the world. Other programs include the Global Youth Leaders program, internships, and classroom instruction within the StFX Development Studies program.

These opportunities are grounded in our asset based, citizen-led approach to creating a full and abundant life for all.

EXPERIENCES for STUDENTS

CEI Internship Program

Since the inception of the CEI, our internship program has been an integral part of our work. Since 2017, we have offered almost 80 internships to post-secondary students across Nova Scotia with a high value on two-way learning. Employment opportunities for students can be of great value—leveraging student interns’ skills and interests, supporting work experience and capacity development, and exploring new ways of working. For our team, insight and perspectives from the interns are of equally important value. Students support our desire to think differently about the situations we are exploring and conversations we are engaged in. Students challenge staff to explore alternative solutions, and they inspire staff to see what’s top of mind for our next generation of workers and change makers. As we strive towards a future that works for all, youth have and will continue to play an instrumental role in facilitating meaningful, sustainable change with the career development and employment services system, post-secondary institutions, and beyond.

Funding partner: Nova Scotia Department of Labour, Skills, and Immigration; Venture for Canada; Engage, Develop, Grow Your Employability (EDGE) Program; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)

# participants: Almost 80 internships, with post-secondary and graduate students from across Nova Scotia, from 2017-2022.

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"I have never loved a job this much. I feel like I am being heard, like my work and my voice matters ... I feel like I belong here."

Nova Scotia Career and Employment Student Symposium

In 2021, the CEI launched an annual symposium to highlight the knowledge, research, and emerging best practices of students working in the career development, employment, and labour field. Students also play an integral role in guiding the design and preparation of the symposium, as well as moderating the panel discussions. The symposium has grown and evolved each year and provides an excellent opportunity for post-secondary students, community members, career development practitioners, academics, and government employees to network and engage with the incredible work being led by student interns across the province.

# participants: The symposium featured 10 student presentations in 2021, 17 in 2022, and we expect 30 student participants in 2023. Our participant attendance (career development and employment professionals, provincial government employees, representatives of NGOs and community organizations) has grown as well, with an average of 20 attendees per panel in 2021, to 30 in 2022.

Funding partner: Nova Scotia Department of Labour, Skills, and Immigration

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Wallace Family Internship

The Wallace Family Internship is a 12-week paid internship for StFX students to develop an entrepreneurial idea. The 12 weeks includes: working with a faculty mentor, group workshops (focusing on business skill sets), and one-on-one mentorship from the Innovation and Enterprise Centre (IEC) staff. This internship uniquely offers an experiential learning experience for StFX students encouraging them to take risks and expand their networks in a safe environment.

Funding partner: Wallace Family Entrepreneurship Fund

# participants: StFX student focused (four internship spots per year with teams up to four students per team: min 4 students, max 16 students).

CEI Student Research Mentorship Grants

These $7,500 grants support StFX students not employed within the CEI who are conducting research that focuses on aspect(s) of employment as seen through a social determinants of health lens. Students from disciplines across the university are supported by these grants. Priority is given to projects that engage with the Employment Nova Scotia ecosystem, especially Nova Scotia Works career services. Faculty members supervise the research and recipients submit a series of reports to the CEI through the term of the grant. The students present their findings and work at the annual NS Career and Employment Student Symposium hosted by the CEI.

“Thank you for the opportunity to do this research! I’ve learned so much and grown in many ways. I am grateful I had the honour to participate in funded summer research before I graduated from StFX.”

Funding partner: Nova Scotia Department of Labour, Skills, and Immigration

# participants: The first year (2021) 4 grants were awarded; the second year (2022) 8 grants were awarded for a total of 12 StFX students.

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Strategies and Practice

In collaboration with the StFX Department of Development Studies, Coady Institute teaching staff offer this seminar course as an examination of community-based development. During the semester-long course, each student explores and evaluates strategies, practices, and techniques used to strengthen people’s capacity to build sustainable livelihoods and examines the role of different agencies (e.g., local citizens, government, non-government organizations, and the private sector) in stimulating development at the community level.

Funding partner: Internally funded

# participants: Varies upon registration.

“I think there's huge value in working with an organization that wants to utilize students' existing skills. ... [looking] at what students can already bring to the organization, what kind of skills they've already acquired, whether that's hard or soft skills, but also helping them to gain new skills and knowledge, like facilitation skills, presentation skills..."

StFX Development Studies 405 - Community-Based Development:

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EXPERIENCES for YOUTH

Pathy Foundation Fellowship

The Pathy Foundation Fellowship is an intensive 12-month opportunity for graduating students from five partner universities (Bishop’s, McGill, uOttawa, Queen’s, and StFX) who have an existing meaningful connection with a community anywhere in the world and an innovative initiative idea to strengthen that community. Fellows are provided with comprehensive training, dedicated ongoing support, and up to $40,000 to make a sustainable impact in their chosen community and to support their growth as active and effective leaders and change-makers.

Funding partner: Pathy Family Foundation

# Participants: Graduating students from partner universities in Canada. Range from 6 to 13 participants per year.

Leadership for Young Professionals – Online Course

This seven-week online course supports young professionals in the early stages of their careers as they explore what leadership means to them in the context of their work and future goals. It offers participants the chance to grow their understanding of what leadership means, explore their own personal strengths as leaders, learn new skills, and begin to think through how they can apply their leadership in the workplace.

Funding partner: Nova Scotia Department of Labour, Skills, and Immigration

# participants: 20 accepted participants to date for 2022

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“This experience has given me the practical skills, professional connections and true confidence to dedicate my career to meaningful work.”

Global Youth Leaders

Global Youth Leaders is a three-week certificate program that enables young development practitioners (20 to 30 years old) from developing countries to strengthen their leadership capacities to contribute to innovation and change in their organizations and communities. Participants engage in learning that is grounded in real-world experiences and focused on Coady’s core thematic areas. Through a shared learning environment with others from around the world, participants are exposed to a range of experiences and the beginnings of a potentially lifelong network of support.

Funding partner: Through funding provided by Global Affairs Canada as well as individual and institutional donors, Coady Institute is able to offer partial scholarships to most candidates accepted into the program.

# Participants: Between 2015 and 2018, 52 young leaders participated in GYL.

Youth Engagement Framework (YEF)

The CEI’s Youth Engagement Framework draws from youth expertise to offer employers, organizations, and service providers a variety of recommendations, tools, and resources to help them better support youth in their work. The framework centres around four key pillars: 1) fostering youth-adult partnership, 2) creating welcoming, youth-friendly spaces, 3) supporting youth mental well-being, and 4) highlighting youth-voice.

Funding partner: Nova Scotia Department of Labour, Skills, and Immigration

# participants: 10 to 13 young people participated in the Youth Advisory Group, informing the YEF. 70+ community members contributed to the research, with almost 60 of those being youth.

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Collective Impact for Inclusive Youth Employment (CIIYE)

CIIYE is a multi-year collaboration between the CEI, Native Council of Nova Scotia, Nova Scotia Works – Opportunity Place, the Nova Scotia Department of Labour, Skills, and Immigration, and the CIIYE community-based advisory group and mentors. The purpose of the CIIYE is to increase the labour force participation of young people (aged 18 to 34) from under-represented groups in Nova Scotia, including First Nations, African Nova Scotians and People of African Descent, visible minorities, Nova Scotians on Employment Support and Income Assistance (ESIA), and persons with a disability through the development and delivery of a workplace attachment and leadership development program. The initiative focuses on creating new meaningful employment opportunities for underrepresented youth across the province and providing supports such as mentorship and peer-learning opportunities, while also creating space for youth to be present in community as they develop their leadership skills and workforce capacity.

“So far I would just like to say the CIIYE program is a great idea and could help many struggling people be successful. In a way the program doesn’t just get people ready for a job, it gets them ready for life by learning many job skills but at the same time learning life skills that you can use to improve yourself as a person.”

Funding partner: Nova Scotia Department of Labour, Skills, and Immigration

# Participants: Currently, 16 young people (ages 18 to 34) are employed with 12 employers across Nova Scotia. 12 of the young people have found community-based mentors to support their journey. 9 community-based advisory group members.

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StFX DiscoverBox Sandbox

StFX DiscoverBox is part of the Nova Scotia Sandbox Program funded by the Province of Nova Scotia with an aim to bring multidisciplinary teams together from across StFX campus to develop innovation in our communities. The program enhances innovation capacities through human design thinking principles.

Funding partner: Nova Scotia Department of Advanced Education # participants: 50 to 200 students per event depending on programming.

Emergent Youth-Focused Research

Through responsive and applied research, the CEI team works with employment system partners to build capacity, strengthen governance, enhance diversity and inclusion in the workplace, and increase the quality and effectiveness of employment services across the province. As questions or project ideas arise from partners across our youth-focused work, the CEI and relevant partners work together to explore how to better support young people. We have collaborated on research and engagement activities to develop new tools, approaches, knowledge, and frameworks to enhance youth-focused supports and services.

Funding partner: Nova Scotia Department of Labour, Skills, and Immigration

# participants: Multiple projects emerge each year, in partnership with employers, communitymembers, and career service professionals.

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Youth-Focused Community of Practice (YF-COP)

In ongoing conversations with employment and career service providers across Nova Scotia, there has been a common theme around a desire to better support young people who are ready to enter the workforce access useful, supportive, and meaningful employment services. As a result, the CEI, in partnership with Nova Scotia Works – TEAMWork Cooperative, launched the YF-COP in the fall of 2021 to better support career service professionals who are involved in youth-focused service delivery, research, policy development, program development, etc. This Community of Practice creates monthly spaces for career service professionals to build relationships, share their knowledge, learn from one another, ask questions, and co-create potential solutions, and effectively strengthen our collective ability to support youth career development now and into the future.

Funding partner: Nova Scotia Department of Labour, Skills, and Immigration

# participants: In 2021-2022: 116 COP members registered for the list serv; 50+ organizations are involved; 20 community panelists, including youth, were involved throughout the year.

In DEVELOPMENT

Program name: (TBD) New entrepreneur initiative for StFX students

The program will provide StFX students the opportunity to grow their entrepreneurial endeavors and grow their networks within our local entrepreneurial ecosystem by developing business skill sets through group workshops and one-on-one mentorship. It will provide a one-time grant of $2,500 per team allowing students to work on their entrepreneurial idea with some start up funding.

Funding partner: Maple League and DiscoverBox Sandbox (Nova Scotia Department of Advanced Education)

# participants: The new program will enroll 10 to 15 StFX students.

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Nova Scotia Career and Employment Student Symposium

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Our Commitment to Youth