indeed young people are leading in canada in profoundly innovative and impactful ways. more and more, we see them creating both fluid and structured organizations, exciting ways of organizing around issues they deeply care about and by listening to and manifesting the new patterns of organizing that our chaotic and uncertain environment invites us to create...

but how do we support the growth and evolution of young people so they continue to thrive, and not burn-out? research from the Millennium Scholarships Foundation has found there is an increasing and alarming rate of burn-out among young leaders and innovators. and second is simply, how do we cultivate ongoing learning between the new forms of organizing that young people are leading and the wisdom held in those organizations and movements who have lived history, in order to root the new and emergent in lineage.

these are not new questions. when i was working with santropol roulant, a youth-imagined and led organization in montreal, we really saw that there are several conditions for our evolution from a "great new idea" to becoming a deeply rooted, nourishing community-based and built organization.

1. the time, patience and the support to find the language and practices to help us sustain our innovations and our energy to keep experimenting with both the forms and structure which would allow us to keep learning and evolving as a community, as a kind of collective social entrepreneur.

2. creating a culture that didn't burn us out.
this meant tending and nourishing ourselves as an “organisme”, a living being, to learn together, breathe, and allow ourselves the space to look at the larger systems and root causes of why we existed in the first place. it also meant getting funding to support the organization's development as a place of learning and leadership, as opposed to a place the offers out great programs.

3. cultivating intergenerational and meaningful relationships with mentors, elders, funders and in some cases guardian angels in which we were all participating in and co-creating venues where we were learning together & sharing our collective wisdom to move to wiser actions together.

in all of these, the role of resources in terms of time, support, and money from the community and funders is critical; it is to see beyond the innovations and into the depth of relationships between past and present, old and new, and create strong bridges and foundations to hold the great unknown that is the future....