Hello Comrades,

Mojan Jianfar and Jo Flatt have been commissioned by the City of Toronto to hear from you. We are on a mission to understand how to include youth [ages 16-30] on the decisions and planning activities that are being made by our local government. And we arent just talking passive participation - we want the City to see youth as an integral part of the planning process.

Over the next few weeks, we will be running a series of discussions, surveys and pop up events as a way to gather your thoughts and insights. All this information will be collected and shared back to the City.

Interested in taking part? Sure you are. We have 4 different ways that you can get in on the process.

1. A simple survey. This will take about 2 minutes of your time. Our quick little survey is a way to get a baseline sense of what you care about and how you might want to contribute to the work taking place at the City.

Click here to fill it out and share it with you friends! which we totally encourage you to do.: http://goo.gl/forms/TSbFV069Pw

2. Express Yoself Workshops. You might prefer talking out your ideas by taking part in one of our two workshops. We will bring together a bunch of awesome folks just like you! to ideate, brainstorm and make some youth engagement magic.

Workshop #1: Tuesday, November 11th from 7pm-9 pm @ CSI Annex - 720 Bathurst Street, Garage on the ground floor

Register here: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/express-yoself-workshop-1-tickets-654586887

Workshop #2: Sunday, November 16th from 5-7pm @ CSI Annex - 720 Bathurst Street, Room 2 2nd floor

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/express-yoself-workshop-2-tickets-14077709809

3. Pop Up City Hall. Think Speakers Corner meets information booth meets walk-in clinic. Take a step into our office, have a seat, rant, discuss, and share with us what you think the City needs to do to engage you better.

The Citys doctors will be in on Saturday, November 15th on the ground floor of CSI Annex 720 Bathurst in the Coffee Pub cafe between 1pm and 5pm waiting to hear from you. So come on down, grab a coffee and tell us what you think.

4. Creative Submissions. Maybe none of this sht excites you. Maybe you want to express yourself in a totally different way. We think that is awesome. We want to hear it, see it, feel it from your perspective...and share it back to the City. So, express yourself. Email us at youthengageto@gmail.com with your wild and wacky wisdom. oh, and please keep it clean - were working for the City. Deadline to submit is November 20th.

Most importantly - share this around! Send this email and Facebook page to all of your friends and even enemies. We want to get all the gems of great ideas, because this a chance for us to influence the way that the City of Toronto does its planning work. And we think that is pretty awesome.

If you have ANY other questions, thoughts, or concerns then just email us at youthengageto@gmail.com. We welcome your brain waves.

Yours in youth engagement,

MoJo Mojan & Jo

Disclaimer: Where possible, all participants will be kept anonymous. Creative submissions may be shared with the rest of the Youth Engagement Strategy team, with the City of Toronto planning department and Chief Planners office and potentially in other formats online. Please indicate if youd like to have your name shared with your creative submissions. All creative content will be properly credited.

Supported by the City of Toronto's Youth Research Strategy and Youth Research Team and space supported by The Centre for Social Innovation.