Sustainability

The Ontario Public Health Association (OPHA) Youth Engagement (YE) Project, funded by Health Canada, engaged 6 public health units in 2009 to participate in youth engagement project implementation and evaluation activities as pilot sites.  OPHA provided each pilot site with training, resources and on-going support to implement local youth engagement projects with the goal of increasing protective factors and resilience among youth aged 11-14 years.  Project implementation has been underway since February, 2010 and there have been many successes.

Following the cessation of OPHA support, it is the intent that the tools and resources created will be used to sustain youth engagement programming within the pilot sites as well as among other Public Health Units working to incorporate youth engagement into their plans.  To this end, OPHA developed a sustainability resource that outlines some recommendations for developing a sustainable youth engagement program.  Many of the recommendations come directly from input and learnings from OPHA’s work with the project’s pilot sites.

OPHA’s Recommendations for Starting and Sustaining a Youth Engagement Initiative [PDF]