Empathy Engaged - Fostering Youth Engagement Through Volunteerism

A lot has happened since Volunteer Canada, along with the Rideau Hall Foundation, announced the Empathy Engaged project in May 2023.

What is Empathy Engaged?

Empathy Engaged is a youth-driven project to understand the hows and whys (and why nots) of youth community engagement and participation. The project seeks to understand post-pandemic trends in youth engagement; better understand what “volunteering” means to youth; and identify barriers to participation in formal volunteering. This information will lay the foundation for a national youth volunteer and community participation action plan and commitment/challenge.

What has been done to date?

The first step in the process was to identify young Canadians to sit on the Youth Advisory Council. Our community partners were instrumental in identifying inspirational youth and, ultimately, six amazing young changemakers from across the country were selected to sit on the Council.

Once we had the Youth Advisory Council members in place, these youth took part in two facilitated design sessions, where they worked to establish the content and flow of the roundtable meetings, and one facilitation practice session.

What's next?

Our Youth Advisory Council members will be hosting and leading five roundtable sessions (two in-person and three virtual) in February. Once again, our community partners have been busy spreading the word and identifying youth to take part in these sessions.

Once these sessions are complete, we will review the information collected and produce a paper highlighting key findings. Those finding will be the building blocks for the action plan and commitment/challenge.

Interested in participating? Check out our registration form to choose the roundtable that is right for you!