The Young Decision Makers (YDM) Network’s 4th national meeting took place in Cornwall, Ontario from February 11 to 14, 2010. We had nationwide participation from various organizations, age groups, races and topics of interests. The 115 participants were divided into seven groups, which used the YDM Model to work through their topic. Topics included poverty, drugs, healthy lifestyles, youth involvement and discrimination. Over a period of four days, teams learnt more about the topic, discussed it amongst themselves and consulted others, made decisions on how they wanted to address the issue, and finally made recommendations on how to best move forward. Here are the recommendations:
To address drug use, groups developed the following recommendations
¬ To Peer Influencers: "Keep it casual." To Youth Centres: "Involve youth in training the adults." To Youth: "Value your values."
¬ To open a safe space/youth centre in every community/town (not necessarily a physical building). Use partnerships in community to donate/support space that youth can find resources, be safe, get involved in activities. Etc.
¬ Create a safe space (monitored with adult allies) that promotes a healthy lifestyle with access to recreation and positive influencers.
To bring forth more healthy relationships in Canada:
¬ Bring love and trust into our relationships within our families, our group and our schools. Showcase the important of love and trust into making relationships healthy.
To address poverty:
¬ In the short-term: Design different resource phone services of different shelters, non-profit organizations and government funded resources for the impoverished. This would be developed on a municipal basis: one for each town, and potentially province-wide. Research into costs and advertise ways into which it reaches homeless people.
¬ In the long-term: With this experience behind us, we could attempt to contact government bodies, corporate bodies, to really show poverty and how it could be stopped.
To address discrimination:
¬ Communities should invest time, space, energy, ideas, experiences, people, resources and money to make spaces for youth circle discussions about racism and other discriminations. These spaces need to be open, community-based, in the local cultural context where young people can meet peers from different backgrounds. The goal is to reduce the ignorance and silence at the root of discrimination. Adult allies play a role in opening doors and providing resources.
To increase youth involvement:
¬ Create an interactive training module that will break down barriers to youth involvement by helping youth and adults: Build healthy communication Understand tokenism Create awareness about positive youth involvement using media/social networking sites
Another recommendation put forth:
¬ The next YDM meeting should take place in Iqaluit, Nunavut.
Teams are currently getting back together to create working groups out of these recommendations so we can create change across Canada!
Current YDM Opportunities! Opportunity Description Important Dates If you’re interested in the above opportunities, send us an email at ydm@tgmag.ca or give us a call at (416) 597-8297! Become a YDM Member today! Click here for a news archive YDM Weekly Calls/td> Are you interested in talking to youth, young adults and adult allies across Canada and helping shape the next YDM Conference? We highly recommend any interested YDM member to join us. This is sure to be an awesome learning opportunity for all of us. Let us know ASAP by emailing ydm @ tgmag . ca Recommendations for Child Rights Monitoring It’s time to look at what 1500 young people told us last summer and decide what we want the Canadian government, schools, media, adults and youth to do. Click here to get involved! - The Mosquito Survey The Mosquito is a product meant to deter away young people to increase safety and / or business. Is it discriminatory or a legit business practice? You tell us here! -
What is the Young Decision Makers (YDM)?
Young Decision Makers (YDM) is a body of youth, young adults and adult allies from across the country working collaboratively to ensure that youth voice is heard in formal and informal decision making bodies (governments, systems and organizations).
Our Milestones
• Held Canada-wide survey and discussions surrounding youth decision-making
• Organized a national meeting in November 2007 in Muskoka, Ontario to brainstorm YDM's principles and possible model ideas.
• Democratically elected two young people from the Conference to attend the World Fit For Children +5 / United Nations Conference in New York City.
• In February 2008, 150 members of the YDM network helped the government decide what the theme should be this year for the National Child Day taking place in November.
• Leading a national child rights monitoring project in anticipation of Canada’s report to the UN in 2009 on the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
• In April 2008, a regional YDM meeting was held in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan aimed at increasing YDM membership across the country.
• 500 young people were consulted in May and June of 2008 to help create an international youth engagement strategy led by the Canadian government and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).
• The network elected two YDM representatives to sit at the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse’s (CCSA’s) National Advisory Group to ensure youth voice and ideas are present at the table.
• Three YDM youth participated in the Learning Partnership’s National Dialogue on Resiliency in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
• We met with more than 110 youth between the ages of 10 and 24 from cities and towns in both northern and southern Ontario. These youth helped us show the Ministry what some of the current attitudes around poverty are.These ideas helped influence a new strategy released by the Government of Ontario that can be found at http://www.growingstronger.ca/.
• We held five discussion groups across the province and worked with these youth to come up with concrete ideas to help youth transition out of care. A final report based on the young peoples input was written and submitted to the government.
• Over 55 youth, young adults and adult allies participated in the third Young Decision Makers meeting from November 20 to 23rd, 2008.
• Began recruiting young people (ages 10 to 29) from each province to sit on the Underserved Youth Forum, an opportunity for young people from across the country to understand how we learn and share knowledge around sexual health.
• YDM was present at the Third World Congress Against Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents which was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and was host to more than 300 youth from around the world, and more than 2500 adults from organizations and governments working to prevent the sexual exploitation of children and youth globally.