Fostering change and fresh voices: Vancouver foundation's youth engagement journey

Abstract

Since 2011, Vancouver Foundation has invested significant time, energy, ideas, and money in bringing together immigrant and refugee youth and young people with lived experience of the foster care system in British Columbia. Through its Fostering Change and Fresh Voices initiatives, the foundation has listened and worked in partnership with these young people to address the issues that affect their lives, and important progress has been made in the forms of meaningful policy changes and improved political engagement. The foundation is now in the process of returning these initiatives to the communities that inspired them. This article describes the roles the foundation played in these inclusive community change efforts, and reflects on the commitments, mindsets, and capacities necessary to effectively perform each of those roles.