Youth en Route celebrates one year of education, advocacy and fun!

One year.

That’s how long Youth en Route, a Calgary-based non-profit has been around. As we look to celebrate our incorporation date anniversary, we are looking back at all that we’ve accomplished.

Youth en Route formed after a successful pilot project at one Calgary high school. Founder Laura Shutiak realized creating a new organization allowed us to focus on our goals and provided direction for our work. We incorporated as 13008037 Canada Association, and registered to operate in Alberta. Governed by a volunteer board, Youth en Route’s mission is to champion and support active transportation to school and beyond.

We took what we learned in our pilot, and went looking for new schools and funds to support our work. At some schools, 11% of kids (age 15-18) tell us they don’t know how to ride a bike. At most high schools, only 55% of kids own bikes. We know what we are doing is empowering youth, giving them the skills and confidence to make healthy, sustainable transportation choices.

Our impact to date:

• We are working in 11 southern Alberta schools – including Lethbridge and Red Deer. Our projects are at various stages.

• We’ve surveyed 2,500 students and understand the barriers youth face to using active travel.

• We’ve received three grants, and expect more once our charitable status is approved.

• We have a Bike Shop in a Box , funded by an Emerald Foundation Grant, that we take to high schools so they can have bike fix up days or explore bike maintenance and repair with classes. Since it was purchased in December, it’s been to six schools, including one in Lethbridge.

• At Winston Churchill in Lethbridge, we’ve supported Knowledge & Employability teachers to create a bike shop. These students are getting skills in bike repair, maintenance and customer service all the while learning about bikes. Every part of their learning this semester had a bike theme. Math with distances and speeds, science with gears and materials, even Language Arts reading was a story about a bike trip. YER has supported the class with PD for teachers, facilitating bike donations and parts and materials.

• We’ve supported donations of used bikes to schools – where they use them in PE class, and with English Language Learners to get students out in the community. Pearson’s Bike Fleet is at 30 bikes, Bishop O’Byrne has 20, and we’ve added eight bikes to Forest Lawn, bringing their total to 14. Our goal is to get three schools to a full complement of 35 before the end of the year.

• We’ve created a Student and Teacher handbook, 20 pages of resources and learning so teachers can start a bike course pretty easily. It’s also jammed with info that empowers students to consider riding. We’re improving it for version 2, and creating worksheets and tactics to evaluate knowledge.

Engineering is key, too

And yes, we are working with municipalities on infrastructure. We were able to get a motion through Calgary City Council to prioritize Schools for future improvements to the 5A network in the city. It was passed unanimously in October, and again in November with the new council. We expect to be partners at the table as new funding and programming is approved.

But our biggest success story might be what happened in Red Deer with Lindsay Thurber High School students. We spoke to a leadership class back in November to get some help to test our student travel survey and get some ideas about what they think about active transportation.

Students talked a lot about the traffic jams and issues crossing the street right in front of the school. We spoke about solutions – many of the students had really great ideas of what would help not only cyclists and pedestrians, but help drivers – and their peers- understand vulnerable road users. As part of our work at schools, we would write an infrastructure report that outlines deficiencies and opportunities to improve safety for students. We suggested that their voices would be better than any report to influence change.

Empowering youth

And they took it to heart. The leadership students called the City of Red Deer and set up a meeting with planners to discuss a crosswalk in front of the school. They receive a promise that it would go in when funds were available.

“The approval is a nice big step done and the kiddos are very excited,” wrote Assistant Principal Sheila Sillery in an email. “I am so grateful for you inspiring them to move forward and look for safety and support for students!”

We’ve been able to do a lot with only a few small grants and a small starter fund. We know that with stable funding, we can change lives, improve travel choices and build community for youth. We’ve applied to Revenue Canada as for registration as a Canadian Charitable organization.  That status is currently pending.

Thanks to everyone who helped us get here

We want to take a second to thank all of the people who helped get us where we are – and there are many. From all the great people on the YER board, to partner organizations like Sustainable Calgary and Bike Calgary, our teacher champions and principals, to local bike retailers (Shout out to B&P Cycle, Ridley’s and Bow Cycle) and experts and others who have taken the time to support us, even with something as simple as a retweet.

We look forward to doing bigger and better things next year.

Follow along for the ride.