Digital Youth Hub (DYH)

The pandemic has ravaged community programs for youth. Community centers and youth programs are closed. We will tackle this challenge by recreating the youth community center experience. Fully online. We will offer value-added digital services and solutions to underprivileged youth via an immersive virtual experience that mimics a physical community center. 

The digital nature of the youth hub, along with support services and e-infrastructure is based on principles of accessibility and transmissibility. Therefore, we will directly support youth who cannot afford to connect by providing access to digital devices and broadband.

The DYH uses existing digital platforms and social media to build our e-infrastructure, activities and supports; Discord, Instagram, and Facebook.

We are solving the problems of 'digital civics' for youth. There is much discourse on youth apathy. However, statistics tell us that "Canadians aged 15 to 24 are more likely to have volunteered in the past 12 months than Canadians aged 25 and above." (Government of Canada, 2016). Youth are "...most active in sports/recreational organizations, school/community." (ibid)

However, social services in North American cities are less accessible for racialized users from under-served low-income neighborhoods (Martin, 2012; Kissane, 2016). Even wealthy Global North urban centers, generally well connected to the internet, digital divides among different ethno-racial and class groups exist (see Amin and Howell, 2016). 

DYH addresses inequities in access to civic engagement through re-creating the community youth center fully online. We will enhance access to community programs in a synchronous online environment with some asynchronous offerings too. All DYH activities will be free and accessible to any youth with an internet connection. Our target demographic is low-income, racialized youth. We will ensure that underprivileged youth have the devices and connections to take part. Our fully virtual offering will connect youth with the resources and opportunities to enhance their digital literacy as well through free courses and mentorships in the DYH.

The DYH is an online youth community center based on the Discord platform. It further uses Facebook and Instagram for outreach, via images and video marketing, to get more youth into our structured virtual space on Discord. This fully digital community center will offer afterschool programs every day of the week and special sessions on the weekends similar to your local community center. Moreover, the DYH will share opportunities and resources with the youth frequently via Discord pages as well as facilitate (in)formal synchronous video audio, and text conversations among them. With a decade of grassroots youth experience, we have become experts at the skills need to build communities online and offline. Similar to physical community programs, incentives such as volunteer hours, food (e-gift vouchers), and honorariums will be provided to participants. Any youth with access to a digital device and the internet will be able to hop on and participate in the DYH. We will directly assist youth who do not have adequate digital infrastructures at home but want to participate as well as offer free lessons on digital literacy and internet use for those who are behind. We will also give digital employment opportunities and training to youth.

We are mainly serving underprivileged, low-income, and racialized youth from the city of Toronto in Canada. Like many North American cities, there is a lot of poverty amidst the wealth here. Toronto is called a 'city of neighborhoods' with over 100 of them hosting close to 3 million people. We directly serve the most underprivileged youth groups and communities from an 'ethno-burb' (see Li, 1998) called Scarborough in the east end of Toronto. More than half the population in Scarborough are racialized, immigrants from different parts of the world, with many belonging to low-income families and/or neighborhoods (see Rouf et al., 2019). 

There are proven benefits of community participation for underprivileged youth that provide access to resources and opportunities. Given our fully online offering, we are always at their fingertips to access. The pandemic has particularly hampered civic participation and engagement among youth and they really need intervention such as DYH. Our digital solution brings the civic to the digital through re-creating the community center experience on an online platform for underprivileged youth across the city. One day we hope DYH will reach people across our country and the world. 

We primarily serve low-income, racialized youth ages 15-29 across the city. We are enhancing access to socio-economic opportunities online. DYH will reproduce the supports and benefits of a community center for its participants. We'll emphasize the need for digital and financial literacy, providing targeted workshops, mentorships, and resources. We'll also emphasize other socio-economic skills e.g. internet entrepreneurship that will drive the future economy. Youth will participate in one shared virtual space that is safe, inclusive, and reflects their interests. We have been serving this demographic since 2010, developing deep expertise about what works and what does not.

We are currently testing this with our non-profit, Just Our Stories (JOS) Youth Association. The JOS Discord currently has 60+ youth from high priority neighborhoods in Scarborough and we have limited program offerings right now e.g. weekly game night and monthly movie night. The youth have shared their vision for doing more sustained educational and recreational programs virtually. Hence, we are looking to take our pilot to the next stage given the right support and funding. We want to host workshops, mentorship, and daily drop-ins all online that will help underprivileged youth from our city have access to routine programming like a local community center.

It improves on old ways of doing things. We believe that the future of community youth centers is fully online. We are here to create that future. There will be positive spin-off effects related to the DYH, particularly if our innovation is adopted and scaled. Even at a small scale, there are social, civic, and economic benefits for underprivileged youth participants such as skills development, mentorship, and leadership/volunteering opportunities, available simply with a computer and internet connection. The DYH keeps these youth busy online in productive activities and out of trouble on the streets. They are meeting like-minded peers and getting access to self-development resources frequently through advanced audio-video telecommunication platforms.

We apply existing technology, name Facebook, Instagram, and Discord. These are some of the most used daily social media across the globe. Discord offers cutting-edge real-time video and audio gathering with a paid membership that allows for the creation of synchronous services and activities. It also offers a way to organization asynchronous engagement and collaboration via text, image, and video. Many of our youth love to hang out and talk on Discord. Facebook Live offers a platform to reach a broader audience who are not directly participating as well as outreach and archive content. Instagram services similar purposes with shorter video and image promotions that are capable of reaching a broad youth audience. 

Our discord, as well as other digital platforms, are available at https://linktr.ee/JOSYOUTH - we use established and popularly used platforms such as Spotify, Facebook, and Instagram. Each platform has its own functionality and purpose. Discord will be the central pillar since it has the best audio and video capabilities that allow for real-time meetings and activities as well as a very good chat and image functionality that will be needed for asynchronous engagements. Facebook serves as a great platform with billions of global users where we can archive our activities as well as outreach to find more youth. Instagram also serves a similar purpose but has more robust (short) video and image sharing capabilities. Instagram also has a younger overall audience base than Facebook. Therefore, we believe DYH over time will be able to build out a robust, multi-platform digital footprint capable of engaging the youth we serve. 

We are subject to the terms and services of the platforms we are using to build the DYH. Part of risk mitigation is having a footprint across multiple social media in case one goes down. We take all steps, recruiting moderators and administrators, in our online platforms to monitor activities as well as vet joiners. This is particularly important because DYH offers services to youth that are minors. Therefore, our Discord community is private and all users are asked verifying questions before they are added to the platform. 

We currently serve around 50 youth. In one year, we hope to serve 500 youth. In 5 years, we expect 5,000 youth to be a part of DYH across North America and some other regions of the world as well. The use of digital technologies and marketing will allow this rapid scaling.

1) Number of service users - 500 next year - 5000 in five - social media marketing and increasing volunteer and work position as below

2) Number of volunteering and work positions created and hours contributed - 2 work and 10 volunteer positions next year - 20 and 100 in five - recruiting through our community partners and networks 

3) Reported improvements in social and civic engagement among underprivileged youth on the DYH - double the hours towards social and civic engagement among youth in a year - triple the hours towards social and civic engagement among youth in five - partnerships and referrals as well as robust in house offering of youth programs and services

4) Reported increases in skillsets and access to opportunities among participants, volunteers, and workers - 25% increase in confidence in soft skills in a year - 50% increase in confidence in soft skills in five - training and workshop sessions for our on at least a monthly basis, all free and accessible

The technologies we used offer robust analytics and real-time data on our reach. We will also implement periodic formal feedback mechanisms such as surveys embedded into our activities and services. There are good e-survey platforms that are easy to use and secure. This data will be recorded and analyzed periodically. We also rely upon informal feedback from team members and service users at events such as team meetings.

We are a team of 8 youth volunteers currently. With time we hope to grow the core team.

We are a diverse group of individuals who represents our primary service user demographics; racialized, low-income urban youth. We met each other through our involvement in grassroots civic work across the city. Some of us studied computer sciences while others studied health sciences. Some of us work as clinical researchers while others are teaching assistants in universities. Despite the professional and educational diversity, we are dedicated to our core principles of youth leadership and engagement. These principles drove us to come together to form a non-profit organization called Just Our Stories (JOS) Youth Association.

00% of our leadership is racialized. 50% are women. 80% at one time lived in a low-income household. 100% are from or have lived in the city of Toronto. We represent the people we serve. We empower ourselves and our peers.