Youth Retention and Attraction

In early June 2008, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, announced that they have committed $1.38 million to develop a "Youth Retention and Attraction Strategy"

As a result CPRN (Canadian Policy Research Networks) conducted 13 deliberate dialogue sessions, 11 across the province and one in each Ottawa and Fort McMurry. I attended one such dialogue session in St. John's in early September. While at these sessions youth aged 18-30, from varying backgrounds discussed the issue of youth retention and attraction, and the basic idea of "Making Newfoundland and Labrador the province of choice for young people"

Ideas brought to the table during the dialogue session included, areas where we all had a common ground, areas of divergence or trade offs, and bold actions.

Below are some bold actions that came from these dialogues, ideas that we fell the government could do to help address the problem.

• Education Incentives
• Business Development
• Transportation
  
• Jobs and wages
• Attracting Newcomers and Providing incentives to stay
• Social Services and Community Development
• Environmental Protection
• Diversity
• Image and Perception of the Province

While I have many things I'd like to talk about with the results of the dialogue, i will continue to the main point of my blog. Following the dialogues, 160 youth of the original 474, were picked to attend a youth summit, where we will develope ideas from the bold actions and present it to government. I was one of the 160 picked, and today i attended the first day of the summit, i will attend again tomorrow.

Today's session was great, I felt that i was able to voice my opinion very well, and I was able to let many people know how i felt about important issues. While at the dialogue there was many disagreements over some topics. Following an afternoon of discussion, we enjoyed a lovely 3 course meal and engaged in bold action development.

We had the opportunity to enter into 3 groups of discussion, I picked, education, jobs and wages, and social services and community development. I will explain the information from each shortly, tomorrow I will be able to pick one of these to enter into a group, and develop a presentation to present to 40 decision makers, including business leaders, media, government officials including premier Danny Williams. The presentations will take place tomorrow afternoon.

From the education groups many issues can forth:

• Reduce student debt (a common problem across Canada)
• Upgrade Education Facilities
• Develop More work terms and co-op programs
• Government Sponsored work-terms, where the government will offer tutuion vouchers, or loan repayment for work. (free to employer, no school fees)
  
• Mandatory co-op for high school
• Government Incentives for parents saving for school
• Upgrade the k-12 system
• More exposure to post secondary systems from an early age
• Develop a better repayment plan for student loans

From the view of Social Services and Community Development

• Heath Care (doctors) for rural areas
• ambulance service located in more areas
• Government Ambulance service, eliminate private services, and station an ambulance in most community's. (where possible)
• 24hr ER located within 45 mins of every community
• better Daycare services (free - low cost)
  
• Hosing Subsidies
  
• affordable housing
• better policing

From the view of Jobs and Wages

• Higher Wages
• Better Quality of work
• job security
  
• more entry level jobs
• programs to support students graduating from post secondary to enter them into the workforce.

I hope to enter into the education of social services/community development groups Tommie for the presentations.

For those of you who wish to read a little more on this read today new release from the NL Government. I am hoping to write more on this in the coming days.

I am going to head to bed, I have a busy day tomorrow, hoping to head back to Norman's Cove tomorrow night.

Cor