Vegreville and District FCSS encourages ‘Youth to Make a Change’
What would our nonprofit sector look like if young people built on their leadership skills by participating in their community at an executive level as volunteers?
Vegreville and District FCSS is taking a unique approach to encouraging youth to volunteer through a program called, Youth Making a Change. The program successfully engages students in grades 10 to 12 in board governance, and as a result, encourages succession planning for the future of our sector.
What is ‘Youth Making a Change’?
Youth Making a Change helps students build on their community engagement and board development skills. Interactive sessions are also held to help students build their volunteer and leadership skills. Vegreville and District FCSS then matches these young volunteers with a nonprofit board to implement the skills they learned.
“Now we are getting youth involved at a higher level, they’re not just asked to volunteer, they’re actually at the table making decisions and being part of the organization structure, and also the planning that they do at an executive level,” says Julie Gottselig, Manager at Vegreville and District FCSS.
In the second part of the program, students create and develop their own community project based on a topic of their choice. Afterward, they become ‘youth representatives’ with nonprofits in their community.
The program is set to start in October and run until March 2019, with students volunteering approximately five hours per month.
Succession planning for local nonprofits
“It’s succession planning for the nonprofit organization because now they have trained youth and are able to keep their organization functional. Now you’re going to have youth that is eventually going to be in those leading roles,” says Julie.
Through the process of board engagement, Vegreville and District FCSS puts out calls to other organizations that are interested in having a young person on their team. Vegreville and District FCSS then trains organizations in youth development, onboarding young volunteers, and encourages their local nonprofits to be mentors for youth. Last year, they trained 11 different nonprofit organizations.
“We’re hoping for this program to be expanded regionally and provincially and that we can share this information so that others will also be able to implement it into their communities,” says Julie.
Vegreville and District FCSS is a nonprofit organization that prevents crisis and takes care of the social well-being of the community by offering low/no cost programs and services to the Town of Vegreville and the western portion of the County of Minburn.
Navi Bhullar
Volunteer Alberta Intern