Tyler Sommers' Blog

I’m going to begin a series entitled “What I’ve learned from the CYA” and in order for things to make sense to all you readers, I’m going to have to outline some of the history of the CYA. This is going to be fairly brief (relative to how much depth and length I am able to provide) and will at very least ensure you understand what I’m talking about in future entries in this series. Here goes!

The Canadian Youth Assembly has had a very unique history, one that is experimental and has been an amazing learning experience for so many young Canadians. I have been honoured to be a part of it and look forward to making more history with my peers in the years to come!

Pre-dating the CYA was an attempt to establish a new Canadian model parliament. This venture attracted hundreds of youth throughout Canada and began with much interest and enthusiasm. I signed up as a volunteer, knowing that many organizations of this nature experience a shortage of volunteers and I wanted to be where I could best serve Canadian youth; eventually I became the Elections Coordinator and was heading up the process for national elections.

Unfortunately this venture met its end at the hands of a problem that plagues youth involvement the world over: the taste of and need for power. The de facto head of the organization simply didn’t operate in the fashion that the membership wanted (this being a model parliament there was a heightened expectation of democratic organizational building). The unilateral decision making of the de facto head and the passion for democracy among the members led to a power struggle that ended with virtually all members leaving the organization and those who remained being locked out of the public forum (which served as the main communicative method for the membership and volunteers). The model parliament never recovered from this and continued to face the same power struggle with each renewed attempt.

At this point many of the former participants resolved never to become involved in a venture of this type for fear of having their time and work amount to nothing more than a ridiculous power struggle. As I was in the middle of the entire problem I had made such a conclusion, but was soon moved by the passion and commitment the former members held for developing something they could influence, build, and that could bring young people into community involvement.

The CYA was born out of a devotion to represent youth, to ensure that the membership made decisions and with the promise that the power struggles which tore apart the model parliament would no longer be an issue (to this day we have maintained these promises without fail!). The first step in creating the CYA was for approximately 30 youth to come together to write the bylaws and governing documents for the organization. While this took much longer than other methods, we felt that it was absolutely necessary for our membership to know that they created the basic foundation upon which the entire CYA would operate and that this would ensure that they maintained a piece of the CYA for as long as it exists. These youth were from various walks of life, lived across Canada, were of various religious beliefs, ethnicities, and political tilts, but learned to put aside all of these differences in order to work toward a common goal.

Drafting the bylaws was no small feat and while there was plenty of debate, there was also a great deal of understanding and compromise. The bylaws section of our forum has been archived so that everyone is able to view and understand the process. Drafting these bylaws has been and will remain a high point for the organization and a tangible proof of what youth are capable of accomplishing!

From there the CYA become a place of debate and discussion while the volunteers worked diligently to incorporate the organization as a national non-profit. This process (from the initial bylaw discussion to incorporation) took approximately a year and in that time the interest of many members faded. Waiting for a year to incorporate seemed to be a little long for many members, especially those with high hopes and aspirations for their role in the CYA and the CYA itself.

The CYA spent a considerable amount of time building relationships with youth, politicians and other leaders, and other youth organizations. Many members were unaware of the complexity involved in building and maintaining relationships and our membership itself. This led to some inquiries and criticism regarding the length of time we had to wait before the first official elections would take place. Needless to say, we built the organization slowly and on the advice of the membership, which meant a great deal of discussion (and time) before many decisions were made.

It soon became apparent that the amount of time we were taking to prepare for the election was costing us a great deal of activity and members and so we set a date for the first election (one week at the end of February 2010). Setting this date got the various CYA parties more involved than they had previously been and it soon became apparent that the Liberal Youth Party (LYPC) was the clear frontrunner. The main competition (in regard to activity) was the Assembly of New Democratic Youth (ANDY), which maintained activity among several members. The Conservative Youth Party (CYPC) had faced a plethora of leadership issues (similar to those that broke down the model parliament) which led to many young conservatives leaving the organization.

As the election neared many members began to question why there wasn’t more media coverage (there was some) and why thousands of youth hadn’t signed up to participate in the election as voters. There are a couple of answers here: There was little media attention because any media that had learned about the CYA had done so through their own research and investigation, or had been contacted by one of our members, rather than a volunteer. Why, you ask? Well this was the first election the CYA had ever held or been a part of (the model parliament never made it close to having a real election) and with an electoral system being developed in house (a special thanks to Steven Heidel for that) there was no knowing what would happen and having an epic failure as our first image with many people would obviously be detrimental.

Tangent: youth-run organizations face an incredible amount of hurdles in that people assume that they are run by immature and unprofessional individuals and therefore cannot stand against youth-serving organizations run by experience veterans. This image has been one the CYA has worked to shake off with every public appearance we make: I strongly suggest that youth attending public events and meetings who represent any organization should dress as professional as they can muster and behave as professional as they can as well (being far too professional and serious is much better than being even slightly unprofessional).

Now the reason we didn’t have thousands of voters registered ties into the lack of media attention. We relied heavily on the candidates to spread the word and gather votes for themselves and only a handful seemed to make any real effort to accomplish this task (it’s not easy to convince people to register, so I’m not faulting everyone). Also, the CYA wasn’t a well-established and highly recognized organization; getting people to register for things is difficult enough when they know of the organization, but convincing them to become involved in an organization they’d never heard of before? Well that’s a whole other level of difficulty.

The election period came (it was a week) and votes began to be casted, so many at various points our server couldn’t handle the traffic (which was unfortunate but outside of our control). There was only one major hiccup when the registration information stopped being sent to voters as there was a limit on the amount of emails our server would send (anti-spam measures), luckily Steven fixed this rather promptly and things continued rolling.

We ended up registering 466 people, with 224 turning out to vote (some candidates didn’t even vote for themselves, unfortunately) and while some had expected much more than this (in turnout and media) and therefore deemed it a miserable failure, for the CYA it was a phenomenal success. Not many organizations can state that they’ve held public elections that went off without any major issues on their first attempt and we learned a great deal about registration, voting, candidates, and elections themselves (you’ll read about that in future submissions to this series). We elected 46 Youth Representatives (YRs) and from there we hoped they would take the helm and begin to shape the CYA as they felt would best represent their peers.

Unfortunately this would not be the reality, as only a small handful of YRs got involved after the election period and we were required to refocus. This was a very shocking and abrupt reality check for me and I’ll talk about it in my next entry.

Well, we sent out many an invite and did many a follow up email and call and we finally have a second speaker for our event at the University of Ottawa on the 20th of this month (February..). All it took was a very simple response:

"Hi Tyler,

I’d be happy to do it. Thanks for the invite.

Cheers,

Graham Saul

Executive Director

Climate Action Network Canada"

and Graham Saul, the Executive Director of the Climate Action Network will be coming to speak. A little about the Climate Action Network:

(http://www.climateactionnetwork.ca). The climate action network is a group of member organizations committed to preventing dangerous levels of human interference with global climate, environmental sustainability, social justice, etc.

Member organizations include the Assembly of First Nations, the David Suzuki Foundation, Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Foundation, and many others.

So they aren't only concerned with climate, but human intervention more generally. Sounds like we'll have a couple of interesting speakers! Steven Paikin and Graham Saul. We also have some other announcements, groups attending, etc, so we'll definitely have more than just two people speaking throughout the day. It won't be boring, I assure you.

And for those of you thinking "Climate change!? Boo, that's not what I want to hear about" please keep in mind that they're speaking about youth engagement, leadership, and involvement. We've stressed this in our conversations with them and I know they're happy to speak to young people and encourage us to get involved!

Also, Steven has been working on the remaking of our website, which is coming along absolutely fantastically! I'm hoping to get it up sooner than later (I'll ask him for a timeline at some point soon) and expect the forums to be shaken up a little as well when we implement the new site. We're trying to make things easier to navigate and use.

Make sure you visit the forum to get involved with CYA's guide to involvement!

http://cya-ajc.ca
http://cya-ajc.ca/forum

All the best,

Tyler Sommers
Executive Director
Canadian Youth Assembly

Hello hello.

So the public side of things has kind of drifted off in the CYA.. posting on the forums is lessened, which is rather unhealthy for our goals.

So we're going to be whipping things back into shape.

Our website is getting a much needed reorganization, making it easier to know what we're doing and to keep you informed.
Our forum and social networking will be revamped.
Our volunteers will be posting on the forum regularly (I'll see what I can do about getting them blogging as well).
I'm also floating the idea of having regular focus groups with our members on various topics - to get a youth perspective on things (using our chat software).

So we have a few more volunteers and we're changing the way we handle and get them working because we've lost too many of them due to lack of communication.

We do, however, have a great document on outreaching to Aboriginal peoples from one of our volunteers, expect that up on the site (I think it's on the forum already) soon.

And a big thing the February 20th Conference in Ottawa. February 20th we'll be holding a leadership conference in Ottawa, our first keynote speaker is Steve Paikin of TVO's The Agenda.

Check out our Facebook event

Information is also on our main website

If you have suggestions for the CYA, feel free to visit the ideas section of our forum

Till next time,

Tyler Sommers

Alright, so things have been a little slow, that's normal though so don't worry.

September was slow for us last year as well, so I'm not worried. Things will pick up. We're still planning a smaller conference for November, in Toronto. Larger one in 2010 in Ottawa. Woopee. If you can help, please let me know (sommerst[ a t]cya-ajc.ca (replace middle with @)).

Now, there are a couple of reasons I'm writing this.. the first one I actually forget. Great.

Well, we do still need volunteers (badly) so if you have friends/relatives/strangers who might be interested, give them our info and my email.

If you like to write or draw, send me some stuff for The Representative!

Now, I've seen a lot going on with CYA parties and most of it is great! But I do have to stress one thing very, very clearly: Do not do anything if you would be upset that we (the CYA) did it.

That means, if you do something, make sure it's something that you would be alright, happy, anything but unhappy/displeased at all (because we all want to take whatever steps we can to make everyone happy) with us doing.

So, would you be happy if we restructured the organization without even mentioning it to you? Unlikely. Would you like it if we just appointed a bunch of positions that are supposed to be elected? Unlikely. etc, etc.

In order to have the CYA parties work and in order to get the most out of them, you really need to work toward doing things the way you want everyone else to do. CYA parties are a micro-version of what some of you may well be doing in the future - the primary difference will be the level of accountability you face. While there are many things you can 'get away' with in CYA parties, you won't be able to do the same thing 'in real life' (and probably won't get a second chance if you try to do it). So please, treat the CYA parties properly and have respect for your peers.

The CYA is a shining example that everyone's input counts and will help make a strong whole. The sum of the pieces are indeed greater. The CYA has been built (bylaws included) by our membership! I'm very proud of this and mention it relentlessly.

And finally. Please be honest with us (the volunteers). We're very open to 'bending the rules' and making exceptions if the situation warrants for them. Just send us an email and say "we're thinking about doing x. I know that we're technically not supposed to do it, but we feel it's best because of z y and p. Do you mind if we go ahead?" - Our response (given that your z, y and p are legit) will likely be something like "so long as you let your members know and are doing the best for them, sounds good!"

Don't hide things from us or lie.. we're really not stupid and we will find out. While we may not run to you and question you, we'll make note of it. Respect is something that must be earned and if you are respectful and honest to us, we'll do our best to ensure we accommodate your unique situations.

Let's be sure to act our best and show Canada what youth are capable of!

Until next time,

Tyler Sommers - signing off.

(I couldn't think of something more original, but I'll give it a shot next time).

It's that time of the year again. We're all headed back to school. What fun! I'm still working on getting my courses (unfortunately the University of Toronto has an application process for the courses I want, which means I have to do extra work just to take a course). I guess that's the price of having a school which encompasses pretty much the entire downtown core. But I digress..

You'll notice a few things new with the CYA website:

We've edited the main page (still tweaking, if you have suggestions, head to http://cya-ajc.ca/forum and let us know). It's now more informative. The centre will be for more prominent and relevant updates, near the bottom is a feed to forum announcements. The mini-feed will just be tidbits of things that happen, basically we're trying to ensure that you stay in the loop as much as possible.

We've also added Google Ads to our sites and forum. It's another way for us to generate revenue for the organization. By in large these are pay-per-click, which means that we get a few pennies when someone clicks one of the ads. If we're lucky we might get some pay-per-impression ads, which means we get paid whenever someone loads the page. As our forum alone receives tens of thousands (July we hit a high of over 100,000) page views a month, that would be nice.

I added a brief bit of information regarding the Canadian Heritage Roundtable that I attended on the CYA's behalf. Showcasing some of what we're doing (in the YOUth section).

As you may have read, ICA Canada and the Green Party of Canada support the CYA. We do not have an official endorsement letter from the GPC as of yet, but when we get one they will go up on the supporters page.

We're still planning a smaller conference in Toronto for November of this year. We're saving the larger conference for early next year (including a debate, etc) - we want to fire from all cannons (or whatever the saying is) when we hold a major conference.

CYA! Volunteering (http://volunteering.cya-ajc.ca) is going well! We are getting more and more attention and organizational support/postings every day, so be sure to take a look! There are many opportunities!

I'll do my best to keep you all up to date and keep things moving along.

Tyler Sommers