Resources for community agencies providing employment programming to youth and young adults facing barriers to employment:
Partnering to Improve Employment Opportunities for Young Adults
Based on research conducted by Double M Consulting and Training, this report outlines practical ideas for community agencies and employers to adopt to work together to hire marginalized youth. This report also identifies some opportunities for employers to adapt current policies and practices to reduce barriers for marginalized youth, and for community agencies to build strong relationships with employers.
Supporting Youth in Their Employment Journey: A Guide for Youth-Serving Practitioners
Finding work can be challenging for Opportunity Youth who, despite their many strengths, often lack the experience or training that would make them competitive. Many Opportunity Youth also struggle with life circumstances that create additional barriers to employment, including poverty, trauma, racism, addictions, homelessness, and mental health issues, and therefore may struggle with employment-readiness. This practitioner’s guide is designed to help build the capacity of youth serving professionals interested in supporting youth employment to engage with these young people and support them on their employment journey. The goal is to enable Opportunity Youth to find and maintain meaningful and sustainable work.
Soft Skills Development for Opportunity Youth: A Proposed Service Delivery Model
Authored by the Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC), this document aims to provide an evidence-based practice guide to working with youth to develop soft skills through employment support and training. The term “soft skills” describes a range of skills related to emotional intelligence, inter- and intra-personal abilities, and personal traits or attributes favourably associated with career development. The full report includes a preliminary employment service delivery model informed by the latest evidence on the value of soft skills in the modern economy, including a focus group discussion with youth and interviews with service providers and agency staff. SRDC also highlights strategies, tactics, and promising practices that youth participants and agency staff said they found effective in soft skills training.
Bridging the Gap: A Guide to Supporting Employers to Hire and Retain Opportunity Youth
In our previous publication, Supporting Youth in Their Employment Journey: A guide for youth serving practitioners, we outlined ways to support Opportunity Youth to find and maintain employment. However, working with youth is only one side of the supply and demand equation. In this publication, we explore ways that youth serving practitioners can support employer partners to create positive working experiences for Opportunity Youth. Drawing on research as well as insights from Calgary-based youth employment professionals, we outline promising practices for identifying potential employer partners; engaging employers; preparing employers; and providing ongoing support to retain Opportunity Youth.
Lessons from the Pandemic: Supporting Opportunity Youth During COVID-19 and Beyond
In January 2021, we asked representatives from youth-serving agencies to share how they adapted their services to accommodate the new reality of working with Opportunity Youth in the COVID environment. This learning brief outlines strategies utilized by these practitioners, as well as some additional ideas culled from a brief scan of related research and online resources. While COVID public health measures may soon ease, many of the lessons learned through the pandemic are applicable in a post-pandemic environment, including those related to outreach, supporting mental wellness, identifying new employment opportunities, and preparing young people to work in an employment environment that is becoming increasingly technology based.
NPower Canada Learning Briefs
NPower Canada is an organization that launches underserved young adults into meaningful & sustainable careers in the Information and Communication Technology Field. These briefs document NPower Canada’s best practices in order to support other workforce development practitioners in developing and refining their own models for supporting Opportunity Youth.
The members of the Collaborative Funders’ Table (CFT) guide and fund the initiative. These members include Burns Memorial Fund, the Calgary Foundation, the City of Calgary, JPMorgan Chase Foundation, the RBC Foundation, and the United Way of Calgary and Area.