Youth and Philanthropy Initiative Canada (YPI)

YOUTH AND PHILANTHROPY INITIATIVE CANADA (YPI)

YPI is an inclusive, multi-award-winning secondary school program that grows compassionate communities by connecting youth to social issues, local charities, and philanthropy at a pivotal stage in their adolescence. Created by the Toskan Casale Foundation in 2002, YPI has engaged over 300,000 teenagers in making grants with and for their own local communities.

In 2016, YPI Canada was launched as an independent, public charity, and the R. Howard Webster Foundation was pleased to provide its support as one of the inaugural regional partners. This four-year partnership is contributing to YPI Canada’s momentum as a new organization, and will directly help over 7,200 teenagers complete their unique civic engagement experience by 2020.

YPI’s model has been studied as a best practice in systems-level change, and achieves immediate, medium, and long-term outcomes for youth, teachers, schools, charities, and communities. The program is offered to diverse secondary schools across Canada every year, where it is facilitated in regular classrooms by secondary school teachers, as a graded, fully-resourced, curriculum-linked experiential project. YPI connects students directly – and in real life – to the issues, services and professionals of their community’s charitable sector, and gives them the responsibility to advocate for social issues and to earn a $5,000 grant for a local charity (one grant per participating school, per year).

YPI is made possible by a growing community of schools, charities, and funding partners, including TD Bank Group, Fondation Mirella et Lino Saputo, The Peter Cundill Foundation, R. Howard Webster Foundation, Hamilton Foundation, and Calgary Foundation.

For more information about YPI Canada, please visit: www.goypi.org

Student teams engage in YPI Canada’s school-based philanthropy project to advocate for social issues