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Co-creating for Impact with EleV: Building Together for the Future We Want to See

Co-creating for Impact with EleV: Building Together for the Future We Want to See

2022 is the year of delivery for the Mastercard Foundation. This includes delivering impact, but we cannot do it without having first embarked on the co-creation process with our partners. Our EleV programs help us to get a fresh perspective on what it means to co-create for impact.

Jennifer Brennan, our Head of Canada Programs, and Nancy MacPherson, our Acting Head of Impact, delve into what the co-creation and impact values mean for our work with youth in Canada, and how we bring it to life with our partners and stakeholders. 


Jennifer, please take us through the journey of our Canada programs and EleV, to the current initiatives we run. 

Jennifer: Our Board and the senior team had a sharp focus on the African continent from early on. At the same time, as Canada is home to the Foundation, we were always aware of the opportunities to have a meaningful role here as well. Indigenous youth in Canada are the youngest, fastest-growing population and a tremendous source of leadership, energy, and potential. Yet they face key barriers resulting from historical injustice and exclusion. 

The final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) and it’s 94 Calls to Action in 2015 called on all sectors of society to reconcile Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Canada. The situation facing Indigenous peoples results from more than a century of government-imposed colonial policies that aimed to extinguish Indigenous languages, cultures, and worldviews. These policies also controlled their lives, dictated how they ran their governments, and imposed education systems that caused tremendous harm. 

The TRC pointed to education as a key to reconciliation. Taken as a whole, it was clear that the Mastercard Foundation could play a role by supporting Indigenous-led solutions with youth at the centre of this work. 

Personally, I’ve spent almost two decades working for a national organization representing Indigenous nations across Canada on critical and crucial policy matters. I was honoured to join the Foundation and lead an effort to listen, engage, and co-create the first projects in 2018.  

In 2019, the Foundation’s Board approved a national strategy and set significant ambitions for our work. Notably, the approach draws clear linkages to the experience, lessons, and insight gained throughout the Foundation’s work in Africa. 

Please share a bit about how important the Co-Creation and Impact values are to the work that we are doing.  

Jennifer: Co-Creation and Impact go together as impact is enabled and strengthened when initiatives and approaches are co-created from the onset. 

Indigenous people in Canada have experienced a long and negative history of government policies and laws which broke down families and traditional systems, eroded culture, and resulted in Indigenous people experiencing the worst socio-economic conditions of any population in Canada. 

Reconciliation and progress require ending this top-down approach and recognizing that Indigenous people know better the barriers they face and the path forward to solutions. Therefore, all our partners are Indigenous-led organizations or are in partnership with Indigenous youth and communities. Our program work with them includes regular progress assessments and, if need be, adjustment or refinement. Co-creation is not linear or static; it’s interactive and carries through to implementation, monitoring, and executing partnerships. 

Why do you think these values are crucial at the Foundation, and what has changed in how we are living these values? 

Jennifer: Over the past five years, our commitment to get close to our work, deepen our understanding of context, and aim at a truly transformative impact are all tangible evidence of the Foundation’s intensified expression of these values. Just as the Foundation shifted to be in countries across Africa, our team in Canada works directly with the communities and partners across Canada.  

The value of impact has taken on new meaning in the practices of the Foundation, thanks to the inspiring and visionary late Sulley Gariba, former Head of Impact at the Foundation, who crafted our Impact strategy using his expertise as a pan-African leader, diplomat, and policy adviser, among other things. The Foundation leans on his insights in advocating to reverse deep-rooted asymmetries of knowledge and power by lifting the voices of young people of Africa and Indigenous communities in Canada.  

Watch to Sulley share his thoughts on impact:

 

How does the co-creation process work in EleV? 

Jennifer: Co-creation involves intentionally levelling the playing field, understanding power dynamics, and creating specific ways in which critical voices are included.  

Each partnership has had unique elements that respect and respond to the region’s context, culture, and realities. Before the pandemic, we completed co-creation with the Seven Generations Education Institute in northern Ontario, an Indigenous institution governed by all Indigenous communities in this region that is home to many remote and rural communities. 

Extensive conversations helped build key relationships to understand the communities’ priorities, challenges, and interests. Our team visited the territory and spent time with students, staff, and community members. The dialogue helped sharpen the focus on critical streams.  

We have since been invited back, where we affirmed our relationship with the communities. We also committed to being in good relationship with one another and being open and mutually supportive outside of the administrative, contractual, or transactional relationship.  

For instance, when the pandemic hit, a group of Indigenous communities approached the University of Manitoba with ways to address challenges facing post-secondary students trying to complete their studies through lockdowns. In response, we leveraged different government investments for capital and equipment. Meanwhile, the communities organized a central hub as a safe, supported, and connected learning environment for students to gather. Facilitating discussions with these communities and the University of Manitoba, which convene a collaborative network of post-secondary institutions in the province, enabled us to think bigger and develop a bold vision.  

We’re also developing an approach to transform learning opportunities for Indigenous youth. We want to help youth overcome difficult transition periods, ensuring that they remain in a culturally supportive environment while enabling them to stay close to home to maintain their responsibilities to their families and lands. These approaches have the potential to open new and direct pathways aligned to the need and aspirations of young Indigenous people. 

We also arranged a series of virtual listening sessions over several months, creating inclusive opportunities for community members and youth to bring forward perspectives and priorities. This information was shared across different networks in Manitoba, generating broader linkages and opportunities. We finalized the partnership late last year. While programming is launching now, the initiative will be formally launched in the fall when we hope that all the communities can gather.  

How are you working with Impact and other teams on measuring a ‘meaningful’ livelihood? 

Jennifer: We are excited to be working with our Impact team. We share a great deal of optimism that our efforts may help serve the broader work, especially regarding the Impact Innovation Labs and building our Indigenous evaluation perspectives and systems. 

We want to help the Foundation be purposeful about its investments in the necessary conditions to shift power imbalances, change mindsets, increase resource flows, and influence policy and practice. We’ve also embedded learning facilitators within each partner and helped them undergo critical ecosystem mapping to enable community direction to drive reflections and shifts. 

Nancy, please share some of your observations on the unique nuances and similarities of measuring impact in Canada versus Africa. 

Nancy: Paradoxically, there are more similarities than differences despite vastly differing geographies, climatic, and cultural contexts. Seeking to improve the lives and livelihoods of individuals, families, communities, the Foundation defines and measures impact as the extent to which our investments strengthen the resilience, equity, and sustainability of improvements in the quality of life.  

How do Co-creation and Impact help drive systems change and make a difference? 

Nancy: Transformative ideas and approaches are emerging through new conversations and intentionally backing the capacity of Indigenous people, communities, and organizations to engage and fully drive the dialogue, to be at the centre of designing and driving solutions and assessing progress, lifting new ways of knowing, and telling the story of impact. 

These approaches are already helping reveal new, shorter, relevant pathways to meaningful work for young people. Our strategy is guided by Mino Bimaadiziwin, an Anishinaabe concept shared by young people in the earliest stages of the development of the EleV Program 

Translated literally, it means ‘living a good life’ and, in many ways, helps continually situate our work in systems change thinking. By showing governments and other sectors the tremendous and successful innovations underway led by Indigenous youth and their communities, we can help give voice and provide evidence of new opportunities for investment and support. 

We are committed and determined not to go back to an era where funders and governments determined the problems and the solutions and set the rules by which judgments were made about success. Together with our Impact team, we are innovating new ways of putting elders, youth, and communities at the centre of defining the issues, opportunities, and ways of knowing and learning from our investments and actions.  

We have themed 2022 as our year of ‘Co-creating for Impact’. What are your thoughts/expectations for the rest of the year as we unpack this? 

Nancy: It’s an exciting time as we continue to implement our Roadmap to accelerate and deepen our work in critical areas. These aspects include digital equity, entrepreneurship, and sectors that have emerged during the pandemic, including health and climate change. Both areas are essential sources of potential meaningful employment for Indigenous youth and will enable broader systemic change beyond individuals. 

We also ended the year with an essential additional partnership and commitment to enable 10,000 new Indigenous teachers. This work will be handled through a unique collaboration with a national Canadian Foundation – the Rideau Hall Foundation – working with Indigenous educators and organizations.  

From an Impact perspective, this is the year we get behind the numbers and really see and understand on the ground who the Foundation is reaching, where they are, and how they are experiencing the support of the Foundation in achieving a better life – and, if applicable, where the pain points are in making progress. An Indigenous Impact Partner Organization (IPO) will be engaging with EleV partners to better understand their context and the extent to which they are able to take up opportunity, shift mindsets and power – and from this, the evidence, stories, and narrative will inform the evolution of the strategy of the Foundation in scaling its support.   

Innovative Impact Labs in Africa and Canada will provide a safe space for young women and men to redefine new ways of thinking about and achieving transformation, new ways of measuring what matters and the use of narrative to tell the story of the journey to impact.  

Jennifer, this is a big year for EleV as we hold the official launch later in 2022. What do you foresee for the year ahead? 

Jennifer: We look forward to the national launch later this year; to connect our work and highlight young people’s voices and the positive momentum generated. 

Beyond the event itself, we see 2022 as an opportunity to connect and communication about our work across Canada. We now have a range of partners in every region of Canada – post-secondary institutions, Indigenous-led education and training institutions, Indigenous organizations, and others from government and business – increasingly involved and interested in our work. Smaller, more focused partnerships also support our strategy on clean energy, Indigenous entrepreneurship, connectivity, and more.  

We are now well-positioned to start talking about the work of our partners and showcase their approaches and innovations with those who can support and advance systems change. It promises to be an exciting year for the Canada Programs and the Foundation. 

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