Hello everyone! We would like to share our experience with Youth Ottawa. Youth Ottawa offers a multitude of programs that create opportunities that allow young people to showcase and improve their knowledge and skills. One of these programs is the Active Citizenship Initiative (ACI), which we participated in, in our Civics and Citizenship class with Ms. Jansen van Doorn. The program taught us how to become involved in community services and how we, as youths, can alter these decisions/issues that impact our lives. The ACI program focuses on problems in our community and how we can do all in our power to help solve them. Youth Ottawa is a non-profit organization that has its goals set on empowering the youth and giving them their voices and an opportunity for them to voice their concerns and opinions as well as involving their creativity in different aspects. Youth Ottawa has been operating for more than 20 years, providing initiatives that address Ottawa's social and environmental issues via the use of art, civic engagement, technology, and social entrepreneurs.

Over a period of roughly eight weeks, we spent about one day a week working on our Active Citizenship Initiative. We did research and looked for resources, learned how to write solid letters to help us make a change by contacting local politicians and even getting responses in the process. It's great that this initiative has given young people like us the ability to alter something that matters to us.

We are very appreciative of the experiences we had, the knowledge we gained, and the increased ability we now have to contribute to making Ottawa a safer, more accessible community. Thank you to Youth Ottawa’s ACI program, and to Anjali for making such a comfortable environment to learn and work in together, and for giving us this opportunity. We have learned that we can make a difference and impact change.

After we were done, we all received a certificate of completion and a certificate of appreciation