Ladder 2 Rise is a connector – with primary goal of connecting Youth to Corporate Partners, Community Partners, and Guardians. At Ladder 2 Rise, we believe that we all play a critical role in our youths’ support wheel, and we will support as an anchor to Lift, Inspire, Fuel and Empower our youth, so that together, we can truly RISE as a community. With an emphasis on Diversity and Inclusion, the program centers on ensuring inclusion of all youth irrespective of their intersectional identifies, culture, race, gender or other. The Ladder 2 Rise Program is designed with three key programming elements to include Lift and Inspire through annual Take a Youth to work Day program, centered on youth exposure to the available careers and streams. Our aim is to ignite our youths’ curiosity and guide them towards the many possibilities that exist. Our second pillar is Fuel and Nourish, centered on providing ongoing mentorship to our youth, fuelling and nourishing them with information, resources, guidance and support, focused to youth in grades 10-12. Our last programming pillar is Empower and Soar – focused to providing the bridge for youth transitioning out of secondary school (high school). This pillar aims to provide entry points and access to summer, winter, co-op and or other placement alternatives for both paid and education based programming.

At Ladder 2 Rise, our aim is to provide a seat at the table for every youth irrespective of their intersectional identity, ensuring that all youth have an elevated sense of belonging. The program is targeted to three stages in a youth’s progressive steps to include the following pillars:

Pillar 1 Lift & Inspire (Take a Youth to Work Day event) – Open to youth in Grade 9

Pillar 2 Fuel & Nourish (Mentorship) – Open to youth in Grades 10 – 12

Pillar 3 Empower & Soar (Access) -Open to youth exploring opportunities after secondary school (high school) – This can include access to winter, summer employment and or co-op opportunities.

Thank you for your interest in joining us as we take steps to hold up the ladder for our youth. Our Corporate and Community Partners are critical pieces to our youths’ support wheel. We appreciate your interest in the program and look forward to connecting with you. Please contact us at info@ladder2rise.com with a request for a consultation and a member of our Ladder 2 Rise team will be in touch to support next steps.

Yes, the November 3, 2021 event will be focused on the Take a Youth to Work Day only as this day is connected to the annual “Take your Kid to Work Day”, a nationally recognized day in Canada.

We are excited to introduce these added programming elements for our youth. Here is a high level timeline of release dates: Pillar 1: Lift and Inspire (Take a Youth to Work Day – Nov 2021), Pillar 2: Fuel and Nourish – starting September 2022 and Pillar 3: Access will begin in January 2022. We look forward to sharing more details ahead of these dates to ensure registration.

We applaud the various community efforts to create opportunities for our youth. At Ladder 2 Rise, our key differentiator is our focus to inclusion, centered on ensuring seats at the table for all youth irrespective of their intersectional identity. The program allows for progressive visibility to our youth throughout their formative adolescent years – with programming pillars from Grade 9 to transition from secondary school. Further, the program ensures tangible actions to create meaningful seats and points of entry for youth, thereby shifting from the traditional model of tools, resources to providing actual seats to support youth as they navigate. With focused audience within the child welfare and education streams, our aim is to cast the net as wide as possible, identifying the youth that need us the most, Lifting, Inspiring, Fuelling and Empowering them as they navigate through L.I.F.E.

Ladder 2 Rise recognizes the importance of privacy and confidentiality, with our primary focus to ensure the protection of youth during program participation. With this in mind, we’ve taken extensive steps to include integration of Privacy and Confidentiality guidelines for all participating corporate sponsors, mentors, volunteers and core team. All support personnel who may have occasion to come in contact with youth (event day or mentorship) must have completed a criminal background check and/ or vulnerable sector clearance for one-on-one mentorship of a youth. Risk and privacy guidelines including data collection, usage and dissemination has been reviewed by child welfare agency privacy officer to ensure compliance. Privacy guidelines are shared to all participating Community Partners to ensure sign off and their satisfaction. Added measures have been taken to ensure overall protection of all, to include integration of terms and conditions as well as confidentiality waivers, a condition of program participation.

Inclusion from a language perspective is important to the Ladder 2 Rise team. With that said, 2021 programming will be facilitated in English. We look forward to offering the program in French in the future.