TL;DR
- The Scarborough Hub for Innovation in Public Policy (SHIPP) is a student-led group at the University of Toronto Scarborough.
- Bavan Pushpalingam started SHIPP in 2023 to address gaps in local representation and create opportunities for youth to research and present policy solutions.
- Students shared their tips for other youth interested in creating their own think-and-do tank, including how to recruit participants, set goals and build relationships with local representatives and organizations.
📸: Aia Jaber/The Green Line.
Young people can drive real policy change — they just need to know how to organize and attract the right people.
Bavan Pushpalingam, a University of Toronto Scarborough student, created the Scarborough Hub for Innovation in Public Policy (SHIPP) in 2023 to address a gap in local representation.
On April 28, SHIPP held its Public Policy Symposium at UTSC to offer an opportunity for students to research and present solutions to issues impacting Scarborough residents. Topics included transit, health and more. The event attracted Toronto City Councillor Neethan Shan, Member of Provincial Parliament Andrea Hazell and The Green Line — all because these students did the brave thing by reaching out.
SHIPP’s President Pushpalingam and the incoming president Jahdae Steele shared how other youth can create their own public policy think-and-do tank.
HOW TO ENCOURAGE PARTICIPATION IN YOUR YOUTH-LED GROUP
1. Find your group
Pushpalingam gathered a few of his like-minded peers to create SHIPP and register it as an officially-recognized club at UTSC. He says all it takes is a couple of students coming together to create something meaningful.
From there, he promoted it by visiting public policy and political science courses, where Steele found out about it.
2. Recruit by involving everyone — regardless of academic year and major
SHIPP is open to anyone enrolled at UTSC — from first-year to fifth-year, says Steele.
“There’s no barrier of entry,” she says. “You don’t have to know about policy to join. You don’t have to already be a policy major.”
She says the club showed her how she could be involved with civic matters, as well as the opportunities and careers available.
📸: Aia Jaber/The Green Line.
3. Make participation remote and easy
Pushpalingam says that SHIPP is successful because it’s widely accessible.
“A lot of Scarborough folks…we work two jobs, we have caregiving responsibilities and we can’t do in-person programming all the time,” he says. “A big core value of our whole program is doing things virtually, because students work and students travel.”
That’s why students interested in SHIPP can join from their home.
4. Create a social media platform for recruitment and outreach
SHIPP has its own Instagram account with posts introducing team members, counting down to the yearly symposium dates and sharing opportunities to join the team.
The social media page becomes a living archive of the work SHIPP has done and is doing, as well as a space to share its plans for the future.
HOW TO DEFINE YOUR ORGANIZATION’S GOALS
5. Don’t reinvent the wheel
Pushpalingam says it’s important to not try and reinvent the wheel when the group was getting started.
“We didn’t want to copy or reproduce a lot of the amazing work other groups are doing,” he says. “We want to support it in ways that we can.”
He adds that it’s important to ask what you can contribute to the space and identify what’s missing — whether that’s research, community engagement or consultation.
6. Create a long-term plan
It’s also important for student-led groups to think long-term. He says he’s noticed other groups sometimes get a grant to start something new, but would be finished within the year. “That’s the life cycle of a lot of these grassroots organizations.”
He adds that SHIPP is able to stay sustainable due to relationship building and care, but also evolving to new public policy and outreach realms.
The group is planning to expand to high school mentorship and educating teenagers on the opportunities that exist within public policy.
7. Anchor research in lived experience
SHIPP understands that the strongest arguments for public policy change are rooted in lived experiences.
“If you want to hear a youth perspective or a Scarborough perspective, hit us up any day,” says Pushpalingam. “We live that reality every day.”
He says SHIPP approaches all its initiatives from the bottom-up, including the symposium.
“You can ask them [the presenters], these topics were self-selected,” he said. “They did that based on their lived experiences, their community affiliations, their own organizing activities…We didn’t do any of that. We just supported the facilitation.”
He says this process gives the students more control and agency because in a lot of public policy making spaces, it’s older adults telling young folk what to do.
“We study policy innovation in our courses. We work with policy innovation in our organizing spaces. There’s so much we can offer as youth.”
HOW TO BUILD RELATIONSHIPS AND REACH OUT TO DIFFERENT PEOPLE
Pushpalingam says the organization has been operating the last three years because of community building.
“And that trust is obviously done through relationship building, through meetings, through coming to summits, through constant engagement, through feedback, through follow-up,” he says. “It’s a long and hard process, but it’s a very intentional process.”
8. Reach out to local orgs
Steele understands the importance of reaching out to members of the community who could amplify the work of the group.
Over the course of the last three years, she’s reached out to community organizations like Scarbrough Environmental Association (SEA) and TTCriders who had representatives attend this year’s symposium. Then, students can connect with these organizations and get opportunities themselves.
She also reached out to The Green Line and got media presence.
9. Reach out to local politicians
Many of the SHIPP students over the past few years have reached out directly to politicians to share their research perspectives and ask them about representatives about their decision-making process.
Pushpalingam says that MPP Andrea Hazell sends the group opportunities for the youth to engage at Queen’s Park.
10. Don’t be afraid to hold public figures accountable
Pushpalingam says no one knew about their group in its first year, so students were concerned about overstepping and navigating policy-making spaces. They weren’t sure if they were going to burn bridges or if they were being too critical because they were holding councillors, community stakeholders and MPPs accountable — especially when these people had control and funding.
But because they’re students, they used their age as a non-threatening approach to encourage these decision-makers to listen to them.
If you’ve found any of this useful or have your own youth-led think-and-do tank, feel free to let us know. If you have more questions or would like to see more guides on how to do cool things, send them over to aia@thegreenline.to.
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