IFA Participates in Sensemaking Workshop

Mentoring as a Catalyst for Youth Employment

Exerpts taken from Full Publication by Barbara Dobson, Luxmhina Luxmykanthan, and Cam Nguyen

Mentor Canada, in partnership with the Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC) and the Students Commission of Canada (SCC), is leading a three-year initiative, Mentoring as a Catalyst for Youth Employment, funded by the Government of Canada’s Youth Employment Skills Strategy. The project leverages Sensemaking to build the capacity of the youth employment ecosystem, accelerating the adoption and integration of high-quality mentoring practices and mentorship opportunities. This approach positions them as a means of improving employment outcomes for youth across Canada. CHÔRA Canada’s Portfolio Sensemaking process is a structured, facilitated, group activity designed to gather insights and generate meaning from experience. For Mentor Canada, this process offered a way to explore systemic issues in youth mentoring and employment, connect various existing approaches, and identify insights that inform the Quality Mentoring Framework and broader sector strategies. 03 Workshop 1 in August generated evidence to inform the development of tools and resources for quality mentoring for youth aged 18-30.

Workshop 2 in September explored barriers to mentorship access and identified solutions for integrating mentoring across the employment ecosystem for youth aged 18-30. During each round, a diverse group of participants from the youth employment and mentoring ecosystem shared their experiences. The facilitated conversation focused on the rationale, activities, and outcomes, as well as the key challenges related to their portfolio of mentoring initiatives. The process concluded with an intelligence generation session where a smaller team reflected on the insights and evidence to draw implications for the framework and broader project activities. The resulting themes were articulated as insights and propositions to guide the project’s next steps.

This report consolidates ten key insights generated during the two Sensemaking workshops, highlighting the significant potential of mentoring as a catalyst for youth employment success. The findings emphasize that all stakeholders within the youth employment ecosystem have a critical role in facilitating the adoption and integration of mentoring promising practices, ensuring that young people receive the support they need to develop their potential and navigate their career pathways effectively. This summary organizes the insights by the ecosystem actors responsible for addressing them: systems-level actors (funders and policymakers), organizational and institutional actors (leaders at youth organizations, post-secondary institutions, and employers), interpersonal actors (practitioners, supervisors, and mentors), and individual actors (focusing on the youth’s own assets and strengths that foster their trust and buy-in for mentoring).

Read the Full Summary HERE