As a part of TransformTO Net Zero Strategy, the City of Toronto and University of Toronto have co-developed a strategy to support broader youth engagement in climate action with Toronto’s youth leaders and community.
The project team co-designed a consultation process with youth-led organizations to understand how the City can best support existing youth climate leadership, and broader youth climate engagement and action. Between 2023-2024, the team facilitated and documented community engagement activities with over 800 youth aged 10-25 years old, designed to centre different communities and neighborhoods. Engagement methods included months-long youth cohorts, one-on-one conversations, immersive experiences, roundtables, interviews and surveys.
10 Recommendations for Youth Climate Engagement
Based on the consultation results, 10 recommendations were prioritized by the project team that: (1) addressed as many youth-identified themes as effectively as possible; (2) were repeatedly identified by youth research analysts as the most important for their peers; (3) helped advance our mandate and goal of centering equity-deserving groups like newcomers, racialized youth, Black and Indigenous youth, and folks with disabilities; and (4) are within the scope of the City’s power.
These recommendations will be considered for the 2026-2030 TransformTO Net Zero Strategy Action Plan.
- Climate hubs: Fund, resource, connect and support the development of climate hubs with a youth focus.
- Transform youth climate engagement to bridge the gap between youth and the City: Shift the entire engagement process to feel mutually generative by centering more targeted, deeper engagement that can be adequately compensated rather than broad and shallow engagement, and delegate engagement to youth-led groups whenever feasible.
- Transit justice and food justice: Prioritize intersectional, justice-oriented climate action in funding, policy and engagement, especially food and transit justice.
- More grants and resources for youth-led organizations: Focus on amplifying existing youth-led initiatives by giving more dedicated City resources to organizing, administrative and logistical support to youth climate groups, and providing additional no-strings-attached funding for youth climate groups.
- Justice-centered climate education: Identify, use, support and amplify intersectional educational materials that match how youth are thinking and talking about climate change, and that move away from describing climate action as largely a problem of individual behaviour and consumer choices and more as an issue of nested injustices, collective action and political advocacy.
- Partnerships with youth-led organizations and academic institutions: Outsource and/or delegate climate engagement and research work to youth as much as possible, and shift City resources to logistical and administrative support.
- Specific resources for racialized youth: Create and/or scale up specific grants, programs and staff time dedicated to supporting and engaging Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) youth, especially Black and Indigenous youth, on climate action.
- Ease, play, and mental health: Meet youth where they are in specific life stages and identify engagement opportunities that can add ease and play to their lives, and design engagement opportunities with the mental health impacts of climate change in mind.
- Jobs and skills training: Connect climate change to jobs and skills training as often and early as possible (and connect climate to as big a diversity of jobs, skills and interests as possible).
- Mentorship: Create a mentorship program that connects youth across the City to the abundance of existing climate programming being offered.
Read the Youth Climate Engagement Strategy report.
Additional Resources
The first stage of the youth climate action engagement strategy development in 2023 included the preparation of the Best Practices to Support Youth Climate Action in Toronto report.
Below are examples of youth engagement activities used during the development of the strategy.
- “Youth Dreaming and Designing Relations to Lands and Waters”
The Henceforward podcast, episode 30.
- “Just and Accountable Futures: Developing a Proposed Climate Policy Accountability Approach for the City of Toronto”
Ayesha Ali, Ibtesaam Mohamed Afroz Moosa, Erum Naqvi, Zoha Sojoudi, Imara Ajani Rolston, (Reach Alliance, 2024)
- “Airborne Avengers Assemble: An Interactive Climate Audio Experience”
A joyful, interactive audio experience to help kids learn about and feel empowered to help pollinators, and ecosystems geared towards kids and classrooms under 10. Read the Airborne Avengers Assemble transcript.
- “Youth for Food Climate Justice Podcast”
Between the fall of 2023 and spring of 2024 Cheyenne Sundance, Aden Fisher and Michael Classens facilitated six knowledge co-creation workshops with youth in the Greater Toronto Area, working where food and climate justice intersect. As you’ll hear, participants highlight the importance of deep structural transformation in not only how we think about food, but also how we think about, and re-organize the priorities of our cities. Read the Youth for Food Climate Justice transcript.
The views and opinions expressed in the resources listed above are solely those of the participants for the purpose of the Youth Engagement Climate Action Study and do not reflect the official position of the City of Toronto.
