A teal banner that reads Our Values in white overlaid on a photo of people have discussions at small tables

Guiding Principles

  1. Youth-centred engagement: We build meaningful relationships with youth, understand and support needs of youth, and centre youth in the leadership of our organization and in all programming.
  2. Collaboration: We are informed by past and ongoing work in our broader community, and we actively seek out opportunities to support and work with other organizations and individuals to strengthen our impact.
  3. Centre underrepresented and systematically excluded voices: We recognize how systemic racism, colonialism, ableism and other oppressive systems exclude many people from civic engagement on the basis of their identities. We commit to challenging the status quo and creating opportunities for youth that have been most systematically excluded in all of the work that we do.

JEDDI Values

Justice | Equity | Diversity | Decolonization | Inclusion

Integrating Our Values

CityHive is deeply committed to ensuring that our values are embedded in everything that we do. From the internal policies, practices, and culture we foster as a team to the programs and workshops that we convene — we are regularly reflecting on how to best incorporate our values into our work. This aspect of our work is especially important, given the deep histories of harm in spheres directly related to our vision and mission, including the spheres of “city-building”, public engagement and sustainability movements. Discrimination and colonization are at the roots of many of our civic insittuions and play both historical and current roles in perpetuating harm.

In acknowledging our complicity, we recognize our responsibility. As an organization whose theory of change exists on the premises of: reimagining our traditional power structures by bridging younger folks and institutions; enhancing representation in decision-making processes; making civic processes more accessible and safe; being responsive to the needs of youth; and building the capacity of young folks to engage in civic processes, our work cannot be done without anti-racism as our guiding principle. Raising critical questions on equity related to city-building is an important part of our work, especially because we are often in spaces where we are one of few youth-led organizations represented. 

Here are some immediate and long-term actions we are taking as an organization to ensure that we are explicitly centering our values in our work. While these commitments are always shifting as our organizations evolves and grows, we share this as a measure of accountability with our community, including all of our youth participants, partners and beyond:

Staff Development

  • Anti-racism training with Bakau Consulting (2021)
  • Equity training (2023)
  • Indigenous ways of knowing training (2023)
  • Anti-racism training & coaching with TufLov Consulting (2023-2024)
  • Trauma-informed practice training (2024)
  • Accessibility & neurodiversity training (2024)
  • Ongoing/Future: Ongoing training to support new team members along their own learning journeys.

Team Culture & Policy

  • All staff receive learning plan & professional development budget
  • CityHive becomes a Living Wage employer (2022)
  • CityHive’s first HR Policy Manual is launched (2023)
  • New Working Together questions are added to team onboarding (2023)
  • Publication of new compensation / pay scale for pay transparency (2023)
  • New pulse check survey implemented (2023)
  • New performance measurement practices implemented (2024)
  • Ongoing/Future: Additions to existing policies to centre equity; restructuring of compensation policy to align with best practices.

Programming

  • Ensure that guest speakers in programs represent equity-deserving communities
  • Conduct impact assessment of all programs to identifying missing audiences (2021)
  • Develop Power/Place Case Studies and Civic Action Stories for CityShapers in Schools (2022)
  • Indigenous Governance incorporated into programming with support from cultural consultants (2023)
  • New accessibility protocols (low stim spaces, prayer rooms, etc.) implemented into all programs and events (2023)
  • Deliver first ever CityHive program targeting youth from newcomer and immigrant backgrounds, Surrey Shapers (2023)
  • Deliver first ever CityHive program specifically designed by and for BIPOC youth, Urban ReVision (2024)
  • Grant funds allow us to purchase new accessbility supplies (earplugs, stim toys, etc.) for programs and events (2024)
  • Ongoing/Future: Ensuring program budgets account for accessibility and inclusion measures; ensuring voices centred in programming are representative of a wide range of backgrounds but centre those from equity-deserving communities.

Partnerships

  • Partnership with Youthful Cities idetifies key audiences to reach for initial 30Network programs (2017)
  • Collaborative delivery of many cohort programs:
    • North Shore Young Civic Forum with North Shore Community Resources (2019-2022)
    • Youth Civic Engagement Program with City of Richmond (2021)
    • Civic Innovators: Renovate the Public Hearing with SFU’s Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue (2023)
    • Surrey Shapers: Public Space with SUCCESS Youth Leadership Millennium and Umoja Operation Society (2023)
  • Embedding Steering Committees into climate programs provides community input on program development (2019-2024)
  • CityShapers in Communities (formerly Climate Action Jam) workshops involve co-delivery in partnership with community groups (2022-present)
  • CityShapers in Schools advisory is built to provide critical feedback on program direction and development (2022-present)
  • CityShapers in Schools is co-delivered in partnership with:
    • Squamish Nation
    • City of Vancouver
    • City of Surrey
    • City of North Vancouver
  • Ongoing/Future: Building deeper, more reciprocal, and less project-dependent relationships with community partners, especially those working with multiply-marginalized communities of youth.

We commit to doing this work and centeringour values in the long term, far past this moment, and are grateful to our community for holding us accountable. We acknowledge that we are in an ongoing learning process, including recognizing the intended and unintended consequences of our actions or inactions. We commit to acknowledging and rectifying harm. We encourage everyone within our community who is at the start of their learning journey to stay tuned to our channels for resources, events and opportunities to further your learning too.

Note: This page replaced our previous Commitment to Anti-Racism letter to provide a more fullsome overview of how our values and commitments are embedded into our work. To read that original letter, click here.