World Youth Skills Day

From the United Nations: “In 2014, the United Nations General Assembly declared 15 July as World Youth Skills Day, to celebrate the strategic importance of equipping young people with skills for employment, decent work, and entrepreneurship.”

Desiree, Life Skills Coordinator for the Crisis Program, and Kiera, Life Skills Coordinator for the Rights of Passage program, were kind enough to take some time out of their busy schedules to share a little bit about what’s going on in program around life skills.

To help youth determine where they might want to focus their learning, when it comes to life skills, the CHV team has delineated life skills into 10 categories that they call the life skills focus areas. These areas are:

From these 10 main categories, youth can work with their coordinator to hone in on what they would like to focus on. For instance, under employment, a youth may want to learn how to craft a resume, or they may wish to learn how to navigate an interview.

Desiree is currently working with the Pacific Autism Family Network to hold an employment workshop for neurodivergent youth. They will be working on pre-employment life skills such as resume and cover letter creation, advocating for their rights in the workplace, and advocating for their specific needs.

Desiree holds a lot of drop-in life skills workshops where the themes are mainly suggested by the youth. Because they are drop-in sessions, the activities are fun, and but rooted in a life skill. Workshops that are focused on a specific topic, such as finances, are scheduled, or Desiree will meet with a youth independently.

An example of a drop-in workshop happened just the other day where the youth made tote bags. It was mainly a fun arts activity, but there was a needle and thread element to it, to practise sewing. The youth also love making soap, so there are soap-making workshops which is an ideal time to talk about hygiene, wellness, and self-care.

In addition to workshops, Desiree meets with three to five youth a day and the topics can be almost anything. “Yesterday, I met with a young person who hadn’t received his ID that we had applied for together, in April. So, in this case it’s about supporting them on a call as they navigate the ICBC system to find out where their ID went. It’s things like that, that can occur, especially when they move into the community.”

When a youth moves out, Desiree will generally stay connected to them for the first three to five months to make sure that they are settled and are comfortable with all the skills that they need to live successfully in the community. Desiree will also work with youth for three months after they turn 25, to make sure that they successfully transition to any services that they may need out in the community. Desiree will even go with a youth to a new service, the first time, so that they feel comfortable and safe.

When Kiera is first introduced to a youth, she meets them along with the youth’s social worker and key youth worker. The team combines case planning with life skills planning, and that’s when Kiera introduces the youth to the life skills focus areas.

Now that youth are settling into the newly renovated building on Pender Street, Kiera has been working on what she calls a life skills orientation to the building. The focus is on building skills needed so that youth can feel good about their day-to-day responsibilities while they settle into the building and the community, then they can focus on the big picture skills.

For example, Kiera has taken an empty room and turned it into the “fake mess” room. In this room, youth learn, for example, the basic skills of cleanliness, such as cleaning a toilet. Kiera has found that “there can be a lot of shame around what skills youth don’t know, and they are really good with the survival skill of saying, ‘Yes, I know how to do that.’” But Kiera has found that many struggle with basics like taking care of their living space, cooking, and the understanding of being food safe in the kitchen.

Kiera has created a laundry room orientation, cleaning room orientation, and a kitchen orientation, so that youth are confident with the basics. Once youth are comfortable and confident with the basics, they move on to the big picture life skills such as preparing a meal.

In closing our conversation with Kiera and Desiree, they were asked if there was a skill that youth learned inherently, while working on other skills.

Kiera: “I would say that so much of what we need to do, especially in Rights of Passage, is to very slowly build relationships, so that youth feel comfortable to let us know what they don’t know. And I think that because we have so much time with youth to slowly build those relationships, that the youth begin to trust us more and more. Sometimes, it can take over a year for them to start really opening up to us in a way where we can really do some long-term work. I think that creating those connections is, in of itself, a life skill.”

Desiree: “At the end of our time working together, a lot of youth tell me about communication in the tangible ways that it has shown up for them. I’ve had quite a few youth say that I’ve taught them how to email. Whether it’s through navigating systems, or communicating with landlords, service providers, or the government, they’ve learned how to communicate professionally and assertively, while still sounding like themselves. They tell me that they don’t realize what they’ve learned until the first time that they write an email without me there.”

Thank you, Desiree and Kiera, for taking the time to chat with us, and for supporting vulnerable youth on their journeys.