06
July
2021
Program Consultant, Kristin Friday, and our Program Coordinator, Juanita Wolfe, enjoyed a morning out at the Core Neighborhood Youth Co-op to showcase SFNFCI’s Youth Resource App.
The Core Neighbourhood Youth Co-op is an essential skill building and alternative education program for all youth in Saskatoon.
The Community Youth Program runs full-time out of CNYC in partnership with the Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools where youth can earn academic credits.
Youth also learn life, art, cultural teachings, and essential skills in a compassionate and supportive environment. They work with youth between the ages of 16 and 19.
The youth that attend CNYC come from difficult circumstances, often unhealthy and unsafe living conditions, and are faced with ongoing challenges as they transition into adulthood. Without positive family and peer support, they are often unsuccessful in the conventional education system. Furthermore, many are involved with the criminal justice system. Most of their participants are youth between the ages of 16-19 and many are of Metis or Indigenous decent.
Moreover, many of the youth who come to CNYC are working on improving the most basic life skills in areas such as nutrition, hygiene, health, and parenting. Due to these obstacles, they try to make their programming scope broad and holistic taking into consideration the whole person and the specific interests and needs of each youth.
We felt that this would be a great location to introduce our app to the 6 youth that are currently enrolled. In addition, the Director and their teacher have information on our Youth Resource material that will assist them in the future with the Life Skills portion of their programming. We donated 3 tablets and a Youth Resource binder. They were very thankful for the donations. We began the presentation with an online safety tutorial. The Program Consultant mentioned to the youth that they could share this information with their elders. The youth full hearted agreed! In addition, we were able to have an online scavenger hunt utilizing the app. The youth all participated and won numerous prizes! In addition, this gave them a good opportunity to witness how much great information the app contains. We thanked the youth for participating and gifted them with Tim Hortons gift cards. Lastly, we handed out evaluation forms that they filled out.
The youth rated their experience working with the Youth Resource App presented today:
We had a few comments from the youth such as, “very nice and kind, very easy to listen to,” along with, “The hunt on the website app was great!.”
We then asked the youth what improvements can be made to the transition planning resource app. Here is one of their responses, “None, I personally found it really good. She did a really great job explaining things.” In addition, we asked what is the most important knowledge, skill, or information that they gained from the presentation and here are some of their responses: “I think just learning this app is a lot of good knowledge…” “Just about renting a place. Pretty cool to learn about that and definitely got me a bit ready to move out.”
The participants were asked how they would share this resource with other youth and we had one reply, “Going to tell my friends to download the app!” When asked if they would recommend this app to others, they all responded “yes,” and some stated it would be a good presentation to the older generation to learn internet safety.
Our last question was how they rated the session overall:
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
