Creating a Positive Impact on the lives of Youth Facing Barriers

860,000 Youth in Canada are not working, studying or participating in some form of training.

30% of employers in Canada are having troubles finding employees with the right skills for entry-level jobs.

MAX Mentors wanted to take a deeper look at this problem alongside the relevant stakeholders: Youth (aged 15 to 30), Parents, Teachers and Experienced Working Professionals.

Omer led the participants to solve for the problem: “How might we create a positive impact on the lives of youth facing social and systematic barriers?”

The participants went through the Design Thinking problem-solving process to interview stakeholders and build empathy, synthesize their findings to generate insights and refined problem statements and finally brainstorm ideas, build prototype solutions and test them with the end users.

OUTCOME:

The workshop generated tons of invigorating ideas and one of them gave birth to a brand new leadership training program aimed at youth from low-income communities, refugees and newcomers to Canada: The MAX Youth Fellowship (MYF) Program.

MAX Mentors is the mentorship arm of the Toronto not-for-profit called MAX that aims to elevate the brand of Muslims in Canada by catalyzing excellence, high achievement and social re-contribution by the Canadian Muslim Community.