Apathy is Boring is a nationwide initiative working to engage Canadian youth in Canadian democracy. They work to educate and help them see and activate their role in the lives they live here. We connected with Sydney Penner out of Vancouver to learn more about her role in research and feedback to continue the organization’s growth.
Describe your charity/non-profit/volunteer work in a few sentences.
Apathy is Boring is a non-profit organization that works year-round to support and educate youth to become active and contributing citizens in Canada’s democracy through a variety of programs and resources. This is more than just voting. It is about setting up youth to find their lane for engagement and ultimately, take charge of the conditions they live in.
What problem does it aim to solve?
Youth have been receding from public institutions over the last 50 years. Although one of the largest and most diverse voices in Canada, youth remain the biggest non-voting portion of Canada’s population. Our vision is a Canada where every young Canadian is an active citizen, and youth are meaningfully engaged in all aspects of the democratic process.
When did you start/join it?
I started working at Apathy is Boring in the fall of 2023, so I’m fairly new to the team.
What made you want to get involved?
I’m a researcher at heart – a passion that was ignited in the early days of my undergraduate studies. Since graduating in 2022 with my degree in psychology, I’ve been able to transfer a lot of my research skills into the nonprofit sector but was feeling a bit stagnant in previous positions I held. In essence, I didn’t feel that the important research I was a part of conducting was being mobilized and put to use effectively in the public sphere. I was also really keen to work in spaces around more people close to my age, where I believed I would have more decision making power and be given the freedom to chase my own ideas. It’s been an amazing experience so far and everything I could have asked for. Apathy is Boring really is a youth-led workplace, and I’ve grown a lot of new skills already that will be invaluable to my future education and career.
What was the situation like when you started?
I started at a time when the organization was in the middle of running new cohorts of our two programs, RISE and BUILD, that respectively provide Canadian youth with the tools to effectively engage in community and gain civic knowledge to advocate for change at the institutional level. Part of my role is to collect all of the feedback for each new cohort of these programs and make sure that we’re constantly improving them to support incoming youth. Since the programs were in the process of running, I was able to really immerse myself in their value to youth at the time that I joined, which was very insightful and helped me refine my process as a researcher and evaluator. At that time we were also a larger team then than we are now, which I think really highlighted to me the challenging landscape of instability that nonprofits face despite the really important and relevant work that they do, especially in an area like our democracy (which is undergoing some interesting new threats and changes these days).
How has it changed since?
Although I’ve been with Apathy is Boring for less than a year, I’ve seen a lot of dynamism and adaptability out of this incredible group of people, and a lot of positive change unfolding. I feel especially lucky to be in a role at the organization that allows me to intersect with almost every other position and department and provide them support. Since starting, I’ve seen us start to grow a new advocacy-focused arm of the organization that’s doing important work at the national level to support youth better engaging with our formal democracy, by reducing the barriers to participation that young people face. I’ve been a part of designing and executing our new Net Zero program that teaches youth storytelling and deep listening skills to advance climate action, and that experience and the connections I’ve made there with other young people across Canada have been so rewarding. I’ve been able to contribute the insights from my evaluations to our major programs and watched how our team is constantly iterating to support incoming youth and the evolution that each new generation brings. All of these experiences and countless others have shaped me both personally and professionally. To boil it down, working at Apathy is Boring has taught me that young people can absolutely organize themselves and accomplish change, and don’t need to be herded like sheep or have decision-making power stripped from us.
What more needs to be done?
In addition to evaluating, a large part of my role is also to regularly research Canadian youth and make sure that Apathy is Boring has its’ finger on the pulse of the major issues facing young people today. Findings from our latest study, conducted in January of this year, indicate that today’s youth are facing a variety of really unique challenges and that all of these concerns can in some way be tied back to our democracy. From the ongoing affordability crisis to the impending threat of climate change to the emergence of AI, it is important now more than ever that youth are educated on how they can chart the course of our country’s future and why they need to do that work – because we, as young people, are the ones inheriting our country and world in its current state. Moving forward, I think it’s crucial that Apathy Is Boring to be given an opportunity to expand our current programs and develop new programs, resources and infrastructure to take on pertinent democratic issues like AI-related mis and disinformation, increasing polarization, affordability and climate change so that youth across the nation are fully equipped with the ability to raise their individual and collective voice in order to see change realized, and empowered to move forward despite a sometimes discouraging overall outlook in Canada right now.
How can our readers help?
Staying connected to us online, sharing our programs and resources with young people we can support and organizations we can partner with, and donating any amount for those who are able, are all great ways to encourage our work. The larger and more diverse the network we are connected to across Canada, the more demand there is for the services and skills we provide youth. That way, we can expand our reach and achieve our mission to keep diverse youth representation in our democracy alive and growing steadily.
Do you have any events coming up?
We have lots on the horizon for the rest of 2024 and into 2025! Our Net Zero program will be recruiting in the fall for Ontario youth, which is a great opportunity for young people to discover how to be active changemakers when it comes to climate change. We’ve also just recently launched our Table Topics program again, where youth can sign up to attend conversation-style events online and in person and discuss topics important to them with other young people across Canada. 2024 is also a big year for elections in Canada, particularly provincial elections. Our VOTE campaigns provide the perfect opportunity to stay in the know about all things voting!
Where can we follow you?
PAY IT FORWARD: What is an awesome local charity that you love?
We have worked with the David Suzuki Foundation in the past, and I am a big fan of the youth climate action programming that they are doing over there and am super proud to have their main headquarters in Vancouver, where I’m from!
