IMSS hosted a multitude of different diversity building and multicultural events for youth. Some events were based on informal cultural sharing, a key component to true multiculturalism such as: participating at the National Aboriginal Day Celebration, organizing immigrant’s family picnic at the lake and park, youth group bowling, hiking, soap making and movie nights.
This program focus on more structured activities like: leadership building days, anti-bullying workshops, diversity/multiculturalism training and youth employment related information sessions. A series of Career Exploration workshops are also delivered to help immigrant youth develop their life and job skills to ease their transition to social integration and work and/or return to school.
The collaborative efforts between different communities allowed cultural and anti-racism sharing between different youth populations such as immigrant youth, second generation youth, aboriginal youth and the larger Canadian born youth population.
IMSS Youth Leadership Program’s successes are:
- Removing barriers that effect youth engagement through knowledge and experience sharing
- Demonstrating youth leadership capacity building as they promote diversity and in assisting the creation of caring, welcoming and inclusive communities
- Increasing cross-cultural and social cultural interaction among youth from diverse backgrounds
- Increasing understanding and opportunities for meaningful youth engagement in communities’ decision-making process
- Decreasing intercultural and inter-generational conflicts and gaps
- Better understanding and relationship between immigrant youth and their parents
