One year into its existence, the youth advisory council of
YouthREX is looking to feature young community leaders in a documentary.
Youth Research and Evaluation eXchange (YouthREX) was founded in December 2014 to “mobilize research about youth, increase understanding of positive youth development and invest in continuous quality improvement in Ontario’s youth programming,” promoting health and wellness, supportive friends and family, employment, diversity and civic engagement among other themes. The inagural council, which provides advice on capacity-building, knowledge mobilization (for example, turning academic research into accessible, usable information) and evaluation support (determine success of projects) was asked to come up with a keystone project. They decided to make a
doc about Ontarians aged 16 to 25 who are making a positive difference in their communties.
“We asked them to do something that would reflect their interest as well as what YouthREX is doing and what they came up with is super in-line with our work of supporting grassroots youth organizations in Ontario. They wanted to amplify the amazing work that’s going on,” says Yumi Numata, knowledge mobilization and communications manager at YouthREX.
The agency has learned a lot in its first year. Most of all, that youth-driven organizations can have as much knowledge as academics and institutions that study and work with youth.
“Sometimes people can assume that academia is where it’s at or take a top-down approach to this kind of work, but we’ve learned that there is already a lot of existing knowledge that we want to support the youth sector into formalizing a little bit and make the knowledge more accessible to them,” says Numata.
The deadline to apply to be featured in the doc is January 28, with filming taking place over a couple of months.
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: Yumi Numata