Our young people need your support.

Thousands of youth have lost their livelihoods since the COVID-19 crisis began and young people continue to bear the brunt of the coronavirus-related job cuts with a youth unemployment rate at a staggering 23% – nearly 7% higher than during the 2008/09 recession.

We need your help to serve and support these young people through this continuing crisis and set them up for success. Your donation will support YES’ mission which includes reskilling youth in cloud technologies, providing living supports and wrap around supports to youth, counselling, job placements, mentorship, and mental health supports.

As a leader in providing job readiness, employment and empowerment programming, we continue to work on the frontlines helping youth face these unprecedented challenges. At the beginning of this crisis we pivoted quickly to provide innovative virtual career counseling, mental health programming, up-skilling, job development, basic needs support, and programming with youth, via phone, email, through webinars and through our online programming platform. We are ready to continue to help youth face these extraordinary challenges, but we cannot do it without your help.

YES continues to break barriers to employment in a time when gaining employment seems next to impossible. YES is requesting your support to help us continue to offer and expand our services in order to give hope to the youth in our community and to help them achieve sustainable livelihoods.

Please make a donation today and help to ensure that our young people are not left behind.

How YES is helping

We are working hard to ensure that these displaced youths are re-engaged with the labor market as soon as possible. YES has quickly responded to the upturn in jobs that have sky-rocketed in demand, as well as those that require developed technological skills and digital literacy and our job developers are connecting youth to jobs that are least likely to face disruption.

In times of distress, youth need a caring adult that they can turn to, to help them make sense of the abrupt changes to their livelihood and to keep them connected to professional networks. YES continues to leverage its Mentorship Hub to connect youth with industry leaders virtually, through email and through telephone, so that they do not feel isolated in a time of social distance and to keep them connected to their industry.

Acknowledging the threat that automation and augmentation posed for our youth, YES has developed a specialized suite of Future Skills curriculum. Focused on those soft skills that experts say will be in most demand, our new curriculum includes topics such as Growth Mindset, Motivation and Goal Setting, Fostering Collaboration and Connection, and Cultivating Metacognition.

With technology, changing demographics and globalization altering the types of jobs available and the skills required for them, we need to ensure that young people are provided with the ability to develop the knowledge, values and a diverse range of skills for the digital age. YES will provide disadvantaged young people with the opportunity to acquire in-demand skills such as a Microsoft Azure Certification, Amazon Web Services Cloud certification, access to free innovative training through new partnerships with IBM and SAS, training in future skills, access to mentors, and work experience.

We plan to increase our mental health supports and programming as we anticipate an upturn in youth experiencing anxiety and depression. Over the next few months we will introduce enhanced counselling and online cognitive behaviour therapy to support our most vulnerable youth through this continued crisis.

Henoc Muamba, CFL Outstanding Canadian Award Winner in 2019 and linebacker with the Montreal Allouettes, spoke and inspired BizStart clients with his journey from Africa as a child to Canada, to StFX University X-Men, and to the NFL and CFL and all the lessons learned to succeed.

Kofi Amoama, Manager YES BizStart, Tim Lang, YES CEO, and Henoc Muamba with YES BizStart clients

Sinead Mc Carthy participated on a panel at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health to an audience of over 100 on the topic of mental health and employment.

Panelists included (From L to R): Sinead McCarthy, Vice President, Development, Programs, and Human Resources, Youth Employment Services; Mike Creek, Director, Strategic Initiatives, Working for Change; Jeff Junke, Senior Manager, Communications and Marketing, Civic Action; Vivian Li, Senior Manager, Inclusive Recruitment, Royal Bank of Canada; Rebecca Gewurtz, Principal Investigator, A Clear Business Case for Hiring the Aspiring Workforce, Mental Health Commission of Canada; Darcy Losell (Moderator), Job Developer & Employment Coach, St. Stephen’s Community House, Employment and Training Centre.