3 Ways to Integrate Meaningful Youth Engagement into Your Organization

Summer is in full swing, and with the change of the seasons, it seems like social mission organizations of every shape and size have welcomed waves of young people into their midst as university and college students dive into their summer jobs.

For the last number of decades, the summer employment rate for full-time university students has hovered around 70 percent. It’s become a right of passage for most post-secondary students to seek out a summer job between semesters in order to gain on-the-ground work experience and help pay for an increasingly expensive education. For the social mission organizations adopting students into their ranks for a term, these young employees offer added capacity in the face of increasingly complex social issues and funding squeezes.

When we think about young people and the future of the social impact sector, it might be tempting to focus solely on leaders like climate change school striker Greta Thunberg or gun control activist Emma González: young people who capture our hearts and imaginations as they battle on the frontlines of social movements. But if we hope to meaningfully address the issues our communities face, as well as offer young people the kind of experience and support they need to thrive, we need to look a little closer to home.