This year, we worked alongside five incredible members of our Next Steps Youth Advisory Council to do something we've been dreaming about since the beginning: creating videos. Real ones. Made with youth, not just for them. Together, we developed and tested a co-design process for video creation — and what came out of it was honest, creative, and exactly the kind of content young people actually want to watch. More updates on those videos soon!

This is just the beginning — because we are thrilled to announce that Next Steps has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to keep the momentum going and create more videos. This is a huge milestone for the project, and it means we can build life skills content that is truly youth-designed and youth-led.

We are deeply grateful to our Youth Advisors for bringing their time, creativity, and lived experience to this work. You are the heart of Next Steps.

If you are a young person with lived experience in care and want to get involved, check out the "Apply Now" link on our website — we would love to hear from you.

While research takes time, we’re already thinking ahead! Over the past months, we’ve been applying for additional grant funding to support the next big step: turning all this insight into a full, youth-designed digital life skills resource.

We’re also starting to plan for the Next Steps Youth Advisory Council for the 2025–2026 academic year. We’ll be recruiting five youth advisors who will help guide the project and shape the life skills resource. Advisors will commit about 3 hours per month and be paid $25/hour, with chances to take on additional opportunities (like co-creating videos, writing content, or attending training).

If you’re a young person with lived experience in care and want to get involved, check out the “Apply Now” link on our website.

We can’t wait to build this with you — more updates soon!

We’re excited to share a quick update on the progress of the Next Steps project! Phase 1 data collection is officially complete — a huge thank you to all the young people who participated and shared their insights. Your contributions are already helping to shape something meaningful. Our research team is now busy analyzing the results from this first phase while also continuing with Phase 2 data collection over the summer of 2025.

We’re incredibly grateful for the support that’s helping this work move forward. Special thanks to:

• MacEwan University’s Thematic Area Research Grant, which is helping us keep the research going strong;

• The Faculty of Health and Community Studies Supplemental Grant, which made it possible to hold focus groups with youth-serving professionals; and

• MacEwan’s Community-Engaged Scholarship Grant, which helped us build this very website, so we can keep everyone updated in real time.

Stay tuned as we move forward together!