Email icon Back to Search

As part of the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, the City of Kitchener welcomed a summer graduate student fellow to Kitchener for the past 10 weeks to focus on a research project on youth mental health. The project revealed the striking negative impact COVID-19 has had on the mental health and wellbeing of Kitchener youth, particularly equity-deserving youth. 

Details about Project EMPTHY (EMPowered, Thriving and Happy Youth) were shared with Council earlier this week in a presentation by Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Summer Fellow, Briana Acosta. Her project underscores the findings of recent research conducted by the University of Waterloo on behalf of the Children and Youth Planning Table and builds on this research to make concrete, data-informed recommendations. 

Following extensive community engagement, the project identified six specific actions the City of Kitchener should consider in collaboration with system partners as potential solutions to the wellbeing challenges that Kitchener youth face: 

  • Create an additional stream of the RISE fund that supports racialized and Indigenous youth to pilot their ideas for solutions to improve inequities and wellbeing  

  • Amplify and diversify youth voices by co-creating with youth a new youth friendly communication strategy and youth engagement plan. 

  • Empower youth in their journey towards independence by considering a pilot program to provide free access to public transit to Kitchener’s youth program staff and attendees, with the intention to advocate for the program to be expanded with system partners. 

  • Address the gap in programming for young people between the ages of 18-24 by creating dedicated programming and supports for this population, with some services tailored for those youth with disabilities and/or mental health issues.  

  • Provide non-specialized supports within current programs to meet youth where they are at by training all City staff who work directly with youth in Mental Health First Aid and on priority topics such as equity, intersectionality, and ageism.  

  • Make the navigation of and access to supports easier for youth and families by collaborating with government, community partners, and youth and their families to streamline access to information about youth wellbeing supports and expand peer-to-peer parental support, particularly for the parents of racialized and LGBTQ2+ youth. 

“After more than two years of living through the COVID-19 pandemic, it was clear to me that partnering with the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership initiative to look at the pandemic’s impact on young people was an amazing opportunity. Our youth have been disproportionately impacted by many of the factors associated with the pandemic and our collective response,” said Mayor Berry Vrbanovic. “Briana’s work shows that the City of Kitchener has a leadership opportunity to positively impact the wellbeing of our young residents by piloting upstream preventative programs and services, employment and volunteer opportunities while ensuring that equitable access of services for marginalized youth is critical to these efforts. This work will be crucial to building the resilience of youth in Kitchener and elsewhere in our region, and I look forward to hearing back from our staff with a plan on how to action these recommendations.” 

City staff will begin creating an implementation plan for Project EMPTHY in collaboration with youth, their families, and systems partners. Solutions will be presented to Council in 2023. 

“Youth are hungry for a community where they do not just survive but thrive. This report gives the City a starting point for what it can do to empower youth in creating the changes they want to see,” said Summer Fellow Briana Acosta. “I am honored to have been involved in these efforts to support young people, who are valuable members of the Kitchener community and who will be its future leaders.” 

 

For more information:

Shawn Falcao 
Manager, Corporate Communications 
City of Kitchener 
shawn.falcao@kitchener.ca 

The Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative—the flagship program of the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University—is a collaboration between Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Business School, and Bloomberg Philanthropies to equip mayors and senior city officials to tackle complex challenges in their cities and improve the quality of life of their residents.