Building From Experience #1: The Youth Action Research Revolution

Building From Experience #1 was a participatory study that worked with youth who had experienced homelessness in Montreal to identify the institutional and social barriers they faced in their journey toward housing stability.

The project supported a youth-led research team that named itself the Youth Action Research Revolution, or YARR for short. In 2019 and 2020, YARR distributed surveys and interviewed more than three dozen young people with experience of homelessness or precarious housing in Montreal.

Proceeding from the assumption that youth are the experts on how public institutions can better support them, YARR asked young people about how institutions such as the education system, the child protection system and the health care system impacted their trajectory into and out of homelessness.

The Youth Action Research Revolution was comprised of youth researchers Laurence, Max, Mickey, and Shayana, along with Jayne Malenfant and Naomi Nichols. 

This phase of the Building From Experience project was funded by an Insight Development Grant from the Government of Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.