What we Heard document released

In late fall 2019 the City of St. John’s recruited a Youth Engagement Action Team (YEAT) to provide perspectives on how youth currently engage with the City of St. John’s, identify barriers to engagement, determine tools for engagement, topics of interest to youth, and determine how the City can improve both how it communicates to youth, and how youth experience public engagement.

Through its work, the team familiarized themselves with current City programs and services, and undertook outreach and public engagement with youth 15-35 via:

• A booth at the St. John’s Farmers’ Market
• A booth at the Winter MUN Career Fair
• Engagestjohns.ca online discussion
• An online survey

More than 2,400 people in St. John’s connected with the project in some way through the engagement process and nearly 900 young people completed the online survey.

Highlights of the ‘What We Heard’ document include:

• Young people are generally interested in learning about how they can be more engaged/informed in city matters and civic engagement.
• Most young people do not feel actively engaged in civic matters and had limited involvement in public engagement on city projects over the past few years.
• Providing feedback on programs and services is important to young people and there are some key topics of interest including: parks, trails and open spaces, environment and sustainability issues, active transportation, traffic, roads and parking.
• Some people experience barriers to participation, most notably: awareness of the topic/opportunity, time to participate, format of the events, scheduling, and location.
• Some people question how much influence they could have over decision making.

The full ‘What We Heard’ document is now available here and will be used to inform recommendations which will be presented to council in the coming weeks.