The intended impact of the Calgary Youth Employment Initiative (CYEI) is to improve employment outcomes among youth and young adults aged 18-29 in Calgary who face barriers to employment. We aim to achieve this impact by supporting youth and young adults to gain and retain employment and by promoting efficiency and effectiveness across the youth employment system to improve employment pathways.
Background to the CYEI: The Collaborative Funders’ Table
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.
In 2017, the CFT launched a collaborative funding initiative to improve employment prospects for youth in Calgary. The initiative focused on the interface between ‘supply’ (youth and youth serving agencies) and ‘demand’ (employers). The reports below document what the CFT has learned so far, and include the initial research report, lessons from the social innovation lab process and about funder collaborations, and the formative evaluation report on the work (2020-2022).
Improving Employment outcomes for Vulnerable Youth
In early 2018, Burns Memorial Fund commissioned research to inform the development of employment programming for youth aged 15 to 24 years and especially those who face multiple barriers to entering and succeeding in the work force and are at risk of social and economic exclusion. This report summarizes that research and was used to inform the design and implementation of the CYEI.
Sense Making Workshop Graphic
The CFT organized a sense-making workshop in September 2018 as part of the social innovation lab process to discuss challenges, opportunities and ideas related to youth employment in Calgary. Sam Hester, a local graphic recorder, created a visual record of that day. Please click on the image below to view the full size.
Calgary Youth Employment Lab Showcase Video
The CFT’s social innovation lab process brought together youth, employers, youth-serving agencies, funders and other stakeholders to explore, learn, innovate, work together, test and ultimately expand strategies to address youth employment issues in Calgary. This video, created by Business on Camera, tells more about the work of the lab and the prototypes that emerged.
Calgary Youth Employment Lab: Lessons from this Process
The CFT convened the Calgary Youth Employment Lab in 2019 to bring together youth, youth-serving agencies, employers and other stakeholders to identify new strategies and models for addressing youth employment challenges. This developmental evaluation report explores the social innovation lab approach as a way to develop solutions for the complex challenge of improving the employment outcomes of Opportunity Youth. The lab process generated many lessons related to funding and convening a social lab; labs as a method to address social issues; creating and strengthening employment pathways for vulnerable youth; and working with Indigenous peoples to collectively tackle complex challenges.
Engaging Indigenous Peoples: Lessons for Funding and Program Design
In the early days of the initiative, it became evident that if the CFT wanted to effectively address barriers to employment among marginalized youth, they would need to bring Indigenous perspectives to the process. This case study reflects experiences and learning among members of the CFT, participants in the youth employment social innovation lab, and Elders and Indigenous leaders involved in the process.
Funding and Convening a Social Innovation Lab: Lessons from Calgary’s Collaborative Funders’ Table
Improving employment outcomes among youth facing barriers is a complex challenge requiring collaboration among multiple stakeholders. Instead of going with conventional approaches to grantmaking (e.g., design or feasibility grant to a single organization, letters of intent, requests for proposals), Calgary’s Collaborative Funders’ Table (CFT) decided to explore the process of funding and convening a social innovation lab. This learning brief captures lessons from the CFT process and other research related to labs. It is designed with public and private grantmaking organizations in mind. The brief begins with a short overview of why social innovation labs are promising in their potential to help address complex challenges, shares lessons learned through the CFT experience with the Calgary Youth Employment Lab, and ends with a series of considerations and recommendations for other funders interested in exploring this new territory.
The Calgary Youth Employment Initiative Formative Evaluation Report
This report released in May 2022 provides a summary of findings from developmental and formative evaluation processes that have been in progress to support the Collaborative Funder’s Table (CFT) since January 2020. It includes an overview of CFT-funded pilots, the field building activities, the learning cohort, the collaborative funding approach and other CFT-related initiatives. It documents preliminary progress towards outcomes and lessons for each component before describing several considerations for the CFT as its members think about the future. An Executive Summary of the Calgary Youth Employment Initiative Formative Evaluation is also available.
The work of the CYEI is situated within the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy, comprising the Siksika, Piikani, and Kainai First Nations; the Îyârhe Nakoda, including the Chiniki, Bearspaw and Goodstoney First Nations; and the Tsuut’ina First Nation. This land is also home to the Otipemisiwak Métis Government, Districts 5 and 6.
