Youth Council of Changemakers Recommendations
Youth Council of Changemakers Recommendations
In 2024, the JFF ABA team launched the Youth Council of Changemakers (YCC), a council of four apprentices, ages 18-24. The YCC was created so that young people from different backgrounds can share ideas, bring fresh perspectives, and inform important decisions about pre-apprenticeship and Registered Apprenticeship (RA). By involving young talent in the design and setup of these programs, JFF can ensure they meet everyone’s needs while giving participants a real sense of ownership.
Council Members
Andrew Hoffman
Brayden Libby
Freddie Rollinson
Lily Kanady
Hear directly from a few YCC members about their pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship experiences:
YCC Recommendations for Program Design and Improvement
The YCC developed key recommendations to improve program design and strengthen pre-apprenticeship and RA experiences for young people. Their recommendations include:
Training design and delivery
Effective program design prioritizes hands-on learning first by embedding labs, simulations, and site visits early in the experience, while shifting videos and other passive content to pre-work that can be debriefed with equipment in hand. Training providers can also offer site-specific onboarding through “first-day ready” packs that include gear lists, safety norms, weather preparation, and role-specific checklists. Finally, a structured practice-to-feedback loop, in which brief, same-day feedback follows every major task or field day, helps reinforce learning and accelerate skill development.
Mentorship and belonging
Strong mentorship and a sense of belonging are built through intentional structures and supports. Programs should start with thoughtful mentor matching, pairing apprentices with mentors based on role and goals, and aligning on clear expectations for both. Mentor capacity can be strengthened through short trainings on coaching, inclusive communication, and giving actionable feedback. Standardized 30-60-90-day check-ins, using a simple template to capture progress, barriers, and next-step skills, help keep development on track. Additionally, formalizing peer support through buddy systems and affinity spaces, and recognizing peer mentors who provide critical day-to-day guidance, reinforces connection and belonging.
Youth voice and continuous improvement
Elevating youth voice and driving continuous improvement means building structured opportunities for apprentices to shape their own experience. Programs can host standing feedback forums, such as quarterly apprentice roundtables and an always-on digital channel for input and resource-sharing, to surface real-time insights. They can also support youth-led program enhancements by funding mini-projects, such as standard operating procedures, updates, toolkits, or safety improvements, that are proposed and led by apprentices themselves. Experience-mapping workshops, where apprentices chart classroom-to-job transitions and identify friction points and fixes, provide a powerful tool for refining design and strengthening outcomes over time.
Career navigation and advancement
Strengthening career navigation and advancement starts with transparent pathways, including clear competency maps and example artifacts, such as checklists and photos or videos that show how tasks should be completed. Programs can scaffold responsibility gradually, moving apprentices from shadowing to full task ownership and pairing each step with micro-credentials that stack toward advancement. To broaden options and help youth see multiple futures, apprentices can also be rotated through adjacent roles in operations, quality, data, or community-facing work, exposing them to a wider range of career possibilities.
Employer and intermediary practices
Effective employer and intermediary practices should focus on making workplaces more navigable, safe, and accessible for young people. Creating a workplace “dictionary” with glossaries of terms, tools, acronyms, and local jargon can speed acclimation and help apprentices feel more confident. Safety training should be paired with realistic equipment demonstrations in controlled settings so participants can connect procedures to actual practice. Additionally, using data for broad access to opportunity, by tracking mentorship frequency and quality, feedback cadence, and progression by demographic, helps identify and close belonging gaps across different groups of apprentices.