2020: YEAR IN REVIEW

With the guidance of a consultant, Youth Central connected with our stakeholders, including youth, to gain insights and feedback. We conducted surveys, focus groups, and interviews. Through the wealth of information collected we developed our next 5-year strategic plan. While we will maintain our current core programming, we will also strengthen our organization by taking active steps to ensure we are accessible to all youth in Calgary. We seek to identify and reduce the barriers that may discourage disadvantaged youth from participating in our programming. We know that youth who are at a crossroads often have the most to gain from community support and encouragement.

We’ve seen the impact that our work has on our current youth participants and we look forward to making our programming even more inclusive of all youth in Calgary.

In 2020 we also were thrilled to develop a new mission to guide the organization – “Empowering youth to find and build their communities.”  Youth Central is more than a youth volunteering and leadership organization, we play an important role in supporting youth to connect to their community and build new positive relationships. We, the youth volunteers, staff, and board members feel confident that this new mission statement better reflects the work that we do in Calgary. 

Youth Central was enthused to be a part of our first Calgary Cinderella Project in 2020, unfortunately, the 2020 Calgary Cinderella Project was cancelled given the growing COVID-19 risk in Alberta at the time. The health and safety of everyone involved was paramount.

We look forward to hosting future Calgary Cinderella projects, including a 2021 event (fingers crossed).

Additionally in 2021 the Calgary Cinderella Project received a Calgary Board of Education Lighthouse Award for making students, who are facing adversity, feel special and respected on their graduation days.

For almost 15 years, the Calgary Cinderella Project has dressed students in beautiful gowns and accessories that make their graduation day the special event it deserves to be. The generosity and commitment of volunteers have turned more than 3,000 students’ academic milestones into a memory they will always carry.

What the Calgary Cinderella Project does is so much more than providing graduation finery. Led by a dedicated core group of volunteers, they apply their professional expertise to create a safe and beautiful mental and physical space. This core group has poured time, thought and themselves into the project.

Our YVC Program Coordinator, Peony Wong, attended the virtual Summit conference to network with other YVC affiliated organizations and learn how we can improve our current programming. Youth Central was proud to receive the following awards:

• Virtual Project of the Year Award: recognizing the most creative virtual project across all of the affiliates throughout the YVC network. This was a significant achievement during a year where virtual projects became more important than ever before. 

• 14 of our youth volunteers won the 100-in-1 Award: given to youth who dedicate 100 hours of service to their community in the span of one year. Very few YVC volunteers achieve this amazing achievement. This award lets them know that their hard work is noticed and appreciated throughout the YVC network.
  

•  4 volunteers won Ethic of Service Awards: acknowledging youth who have served at least 500 hours with YVC over their career–which is the equivalent of three months straight. Very few people devote such service to their community over the course of their entire lives. We are so proud of these extraordinary youth who reached this special milestone before turning 18.

The Big Build initiative creates construction-related service projects that help meet community needs, while also building trade skills among youth. We hope to engage over 75 youth volunteers and to volunteer 500+ hours by March 2021. Home Depot North Hill has committed to providing supplies and guidance. We partnered with four organizations including:

• • The Bowness Community Association: Who constructed an outdoor seating area for community members.

• • Bethany Care Riverview: Who plan to build an outdoor shed in their courtyard.

• • Knox Presbysterian Church: Who are building Little Free Libraries and wooden benches for their community space.
    

• • Fuse33 Makerspace: Who are using their space and services to build the Little Free Libraries, wood benches, and outdoor yard games for our partners.

We realized youth were eager to connect with one another through virtual volunteer projects. They enjoyed being able to give back to the community during this difficult and uncertain time. Our virtual projects allowed youth to volunteer and help the community from the safety of their home.

Their popularity and success could be seen as the projects filled very quickly once posted on our database. We knew we were onto something when so many youth were committing to multiple projects.

Our Tech Buddies program was a particularly successful virtual project.  This project connected youth volunteers with seniors through Zoom, where they would teach seniors how to make the most out of their IOS devices.

Through this project, Youth Central secured a valuable new partnership with a new agency in our community and those who participated felt that their time spent was meaningful, fun, and engaging.

Youth Central realized in March that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we would be unable to hold our ceremony in person this year. Although we initially hoped to postpone the event from May to June, it became clear that this would not be in the best interests of our guests. Youth Central staff and YODA committee members chose to adapt our ceremony into a virtual award presentation.

We opted for a pre-recorded virtual ceremony, due to restricted access to technology for many of our youth finalists during the pandemic. With the help of our award sponsors, staff, volunteers, and a few celebrities, we created a presentation that we were proud to share with our finalists. Pre-recording our virtual ceremony made it possible for youth and their families to access the video when it was convenient for them. It was published on wwww.youthcentral.com/yoda on June 6th and has been viewed 282 times since.

Volunteers and staff secured a few congratulatory videos from local celebrities to celebrate our finalists including: Andrew Phung (Kim’s Convenience), Paul Sun-Hyung Lee (Kim’s Convenience), Mark Tewskbury (gold medal swimmer, 1992 Olympics), and Mayor Naheed Nenshi. Finally, we were proud of the way staff came together to deliver all 27 gift bags and nine awards to our finalists and recipients in person, on June 6th. 

Another significant change was adding another award category, for a total of nine. After consultation with current Youth Central volunteers, we learned that there was a desire to see a category that would acknowledge some of the innovative work youth are doing in Calgary. We added the Innovate category in January of 2020. We were thrilled to see nominations come in from dynamic areas including hackathons, fundraisers, and other community initiatives that had been previously missed by our other categories.