About
Youth Wellness Lab
By, with, and for youth
Our Mission
The Youth Wellness Lab’s mission is to create a safe space for sustainable empowerment and expression through research and collaborative conversations for youth, by youth. By providing opportunities to engage in dialogue, we focus on issues that youth experience and uplift ideas about their wellness.
Co-directed by FIFSW professors Stephanie Begun and Bryn King, the YWL aspires to create knowledge that speaks to the intersectional identities of young people ages 29 and younger and engages youth as authentic partners and leaders in designing, developing, and translating research that impacts service delivery to improve youth outcomes.
Our Story
Housed at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work (FIFSW), University of Toronto (UofT), the Youth Wellness Lab (YWL) is a hub for youth, academic researchers, and community-based partners to collaborate on research and change-making efforts to improve youths’ health and well-being. The YWL engages young people, ages 29 and under, whose identities and lived experiences reflect those that are too often excluded from but most impacted by issues of access and equity across public systems. Currently, all YWL youth researchers are youth of colour, and some are 2SLGBTQ+, young people with neurodiversities, and/or youth with disabilities. The YWL is also comprised of youth with intersectional lived experiences of homelessness, child welfare, justice, and/or other systems involvement.
With seed funding from a small FIFSW grant (Dean’s Network Award), professors Stephanie Begun and Bryn King were able to bring together a small group of young people who desired a space for authentic involvement in research. Our “founding” meeting was held in February 2020, but by March, the world had changed dramatically. The issues that we initially sought to explore grew in magnitude and urgency amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and intersectional pandemics of anti-Black, anti-Asian, and anti-Indigenous racism. We built the foundation of the YWL during this period of heightened social isolation and upheaval, when partnering with youth on research that focused on the issues that mattered most to them proved even more critically important.
At our founding and during this developmental period, the YWL established a Youth Advisory Committee (YAC). This group wrote our mission statement, helped to articulate the vision of the YWL, and were central to the conceptualization and implementation of our earliest projects. Our team also included student researchers (undergraduate and graduate), several of whom were also youth and all of whom brought lived and professional experience that aligned with our work and our mission. Over time, team members became involved in all aspects of core YWL projects and expressed interest in gaining more research training and mentorship through Stephanie’s and Bryn’s grant-funded projects, and we realized that an organizational structure that separately identified YAC members and research assistants did not reflect our practice nor our intentions. As such, the YWL shifted toward a model of shared governance between the youth researchers (who are now paid UofT research staff and/or students) and adult academic mentors.
Today, the YWL functions as a youth-adult partnership. Youth researchers’ active involvement and co-leadership of our research have invaluably enhanced projects on topics including child welfare, youth homelessness, reproductive and sexual health, anti-racism, and family violence. We believe that the YWL represents an exciting opportunity for developing a scholarly pipeline of research and community leaders from under-represented and equity-deserving groups, while serving as a vehicle for co-creating youth-centered research knowledge in broader public spheres, by, with, and for youth.
Using both traditional and innovative methodologies, our work focuses on engaging marginalized and under-served youth, their families, and their communities. Read about the Youth Wellness Lab’s research and community engagement projects.
Featuring research work:
Digital Storytelling in a Dual Pandemic
This COVID-era arts-based study partnered with StoryCentre Canada for digital storytelling workshops, strengthening youth-adult partnerships and creating community-driven stories. Follow-up research will adapt the model for young people.
The Real TO: An Instagram Live Series
The Real TO was created during the COVID-19 pandemic to connect Black and racialized youth and address their challenges. An Instagram Live Series in 2022 featured youth discussing issues like online learning and young motherhood with community leaders and peers.
Young Parents Project
This project explored the experiences of young mothers with involvement in the child welfare system while they were pregnant or parenting. (We have a lot of papers already out so take out findings coming soon).
