YESS Evaluation Framework

Introducing the yess cohort

Building on the success of the first CBYF cohort in learning and advancing strategies together, Tamarack has collaborated with communities to create a new, more focused cohort. Starting in 2025, six communities – which include Yellowknife, Grande Prairie, Sudbury, Chatham-Kent, Moncton, and the Yukon Territory – have embarked on a journey together around understanding and addressing the issue of youth employment. For three years, these communities will respond to new and emerging systemic challenges within the youth employment sector through strategic, cross-sector partnerships, by using research and development approaches, and centring youth voice.

The goal for the communities is to develop and test innovative solutions to complex problems around youth employment, ensuring that they are scalable and sustainable. Tamarack will share these innovations across the membership and broader learning network to build organizational and sectoral capacity to improve outcomes for youth. Through the innovations, communities will help youth develop skills and gain the experience they need to successfully transition into the labour market. This will be done by supporting the needs of all youth – especially youth facing systemic barriers to success – to develop skills, knowledge, and networks through education, skills development, and meaningful work experience.

Through this cohort, Tamarack will:

• Support young people and adult allies in place through six small, rural, and remote communities of the CBYF network
• Strengthen community connections between youth, employers, and the social impact sector by collaboratively facing challenges around youth employment in their communities
• Rally hope and optimism in taking collective action on the things that matter most to young people around youth employment
• Facilitate learning when it comes to practicing and embedding best practices for engaging young people through collective impact work on youth employment
• Engage and elevate the voice of youth – those who are most impacted by employment issues and who have the greatest insight into possible solutions
• Support communities to take action on youth employment and focus on impact

As we move into this next phase of Communities Building Youth Futures, we are excited to grow the capacity of changemakers through ongoing network supports and cohort-focused action, shift policy and advocate for systems change in how we engage and meet the needs of young people, and drive large scale change by supporting communities to develop youth-centred innovations that are scalable and sustainable.