The Underserved and the Overwhelmed: A Youth Advisory Project for Street-Involved Youth in Toronto

• In Event: Education in Complex Contexts: Refugee, Indigenous, and Marginalized Youth Experiences

Proposal

Street-involved youth face many barriers in traditional education settings (Styczynski, 2017). One of the ways that this group of students can be empowered to lead conversations about peace and healing is in small group settings where their right to participate is enshrined (Gaetz, 2010). With this in mind, this presentation focuses on the experience of teaching and facilitating wellbeing to a youth advisory team for the Helix Foundation, a small Canadian foundation focused on youth resiliency.

The Helix Foundation's Youth Advisory Team (YAT) came together in the spring of 2025 with the purpose of working together on advocacy and research related to at-risk youth and peace and wellbeing. This Advisory Team was chosen for their lived experiences with homelessness, racism, homophobia, and more. The YAT decided to focus their efforts on a unique website which provides reviews on services that marginalized youth use, including employment, youth shelters and mental health. This relates to peace and wellbeing because the basic amenities in life need to be taken care of so young people can feel empowered to look for further education and work opportunities.

This workshop will include a discussion led by YAT members with lived experience as they talk about what they learned during the creation of this resource, where the gaps for at-risk youth still remain, and what they hope others can think of when they are doing work with structurally vulnerable youth. Our recommendations will focus on what will be useful for the audience at CIES 2026, namely how our learnings can be used by teachers and teacher educators when they work with street-involved youth. The lead from the Helix Foundation will facilitate this presentation, and can also speak to the role philanthropy can play in education of structurally marginalized populations.

Author

• Katherine Butler