Our Youth Forums have historically been held as full-day, in-person experiences, but COVID-19 forced an unusual school year where students across Canada were learning in the classroom, online from home, or some combination of both. With consistently changing guidelines and learning systems, we decided to find a way to move our Youth Forums to a virtual format. We knew that skipping a year wasn’t an option since students needed access to the skills and knowledge provided in the Forums.

Creating a multi-component virtual events series in just a few months (and on a small budget) was a challenge. In addition to developing new programming, we also had to figure out how we could work with school board privacy policies, teachers who are new to technology and virtual learning, events covering multiple time zones and a myriad of school schedules, while some students were learning from home. Our team pulled it off though, and we are so pleased with the final product!