Young Canadians for Resources (YCR) is a youth advocacy initiative created by students and young professionals, for students and young professionals that encourages young Canadians to have a balanced and informed conversation about our natural resources and the environment. Since our organization first started a few years ago (originally under the name of Students For Canada), we have done social media content on Instagram and YouTube, hosted events, ran a speaker series, and done natural resource advocacy/awareness campaigns.
For Summer 2023, we tried something new to make our program bigger and better than ever before. We wanted to have representation across Canada from students and young professionals who really cared about natural resources and that were also knowledgeable and confident to speak on issues relating to natural resources among, their friends, family, colleagues, and classmates. So, we hired thirteen ambassadors from across Canada to join us for a summer in Calgary to learn about the importance of Canadian natural resources and to help us make content that would appeal to other students and young professionals from their respective regions.
The first week of the summer was spent giving the ambassadors a crash course on YCR’s core values of people, planet, and prosperity, as well as how all of these values come together in policy. In the subsequent week we gave crash courses on the issues facing a few of the sectors we advocate for across Canada including forestry, agriculture, mining, oil and gas, and renewables. After those first few weeks, ambassadors time was mostly spent their time working on personal projects to help expand YCR’s reach across Canada. However, learning about natural resources didn’t stop with those first few weeks, through out the summer ambassadors had the opportunity to do field trips visiting Banff National Park, Blackfoot Crossing Historical Park an oil and gas drill site, and a functioning Cattle Ranch where pipeline was being constructed.
Beyond out of office field trips, YCR ambassadors also participated along side other summer students working in downtown Calgary in three corporate competitions YCR put on that had a total of $12,000 in cash prizes up for grabs. These competitions included: a case competition where students presented proposed solutions for the federal emissions cap that will be brought fourth this Fall; the Dragons Den competition, which had students propose their resource advocacy campaign ideas to a room full of energy executives from across Calgary; lastly, the Model United Nations had students adopt the perspectives of different countries and attempt to develop resolutions on balancing energy security with emission reductions globally. Ambassadors also interacted with other summer students across Calgary at our four lunch workshops we had throughout the summer and at our summer afterwork networking events and socials. Networking events gave ambassadors the opportunity to make connections with fellow future industry leaders as well as current industry leaders they never would have been able to have conversations with at any other job. Additionally, ambassadors were able to represent YCR at conferences including the National Coalition of Chiefs and the Global Energy Show in Calgary, as well as at the Critical Minerals Conference in Kelowna.
The bulk of our ambassadors time was spent working on personal projects to expand YCR’s reach throughout their respective regions. These projects primarily included writing blogs, planning for future events across Canada, making short video content, and a project called RIMBY (resources in my backyard) in which ambassadors presented on the value different natural resource sectors had for their home communities. Many ambassadors also took up projects not required of them that they thought would help YCR grow. These included starting a Twitter account and a podcast; doing interviews with students at universities across Canada including University of Alberta, University of Saskatchewan, and University of British Columbia; and doing interviews with some of Canada’s leaders like Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe.
Moving forward into the Fall, several of our ambassadors have proposed personal projects to continue spreading information about the positive aspects of Canadian natural resource development to young people in their regions and across Canada. While its a bit early to start talking about what next Summer will entail for YCR, with the success of this summer we have a set of ambassadors across Canada eager to continue spreading the importance of resources across Canada.
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