A Partnership for Youth and Planetary Wellbeing

This lecture introduces The Partnership for Youth and Planetary Wellbeing, an intergenerational, international research partnership that centres youth leadership, diverse ways of knowing, and anticolonial approaches to research and education. Co-led by young people and community partners in Canada, Costa Rica, Belize, and Chile, the project explores how youth in diverse contexts understand and practice living well and sustainably in the world. Central to the partnership are the Youth Advisory Committees (YACs), many of whom will share the stage in this presentation to describe how they collaborated with researchers and community organizations to shape the research process, co-develop questions, design locally grounded methods, and guide the work from its inception through to knowledge sharing. YACs and youth participants also led creative forms of engagement, data collection, and knowledge mobilization, co-creating outputs including a digital archive, documentary films, and a photobook. Alongside their work within local communities, YAC members collaborated across countries through participation in the Conference for Youth and Planetary Wellbeing at the Las Nubes EcoCampus in Costa Rica in August 2025. The lecture foregrounds youth as knowledge holders, producers, and agents of change, and reflects on intersections of place, identity, age, socio-ecological precarity, education, and wellbeing, while demonstrating how education and research can support youth empowerment, relational learning, and more just and sustainable futures aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Presenters:

 Live, via Zoom:

• Kate Tilleczek
• Deborah MacDonald
• Roxanne Cohen
• Canada Youth Advisory Committee:
  • Zakirah Allain
  • Jessica Huang
  • Polina Vaynshtok
  • Sierra Gogol
• Kasia Lujan
• Costa Rica Youth Advisory Committee:
  • Marilyn Rodríguez Arias
  • Oscar Iván Hernández Vásquez
  • Gabriel “Yoyo” Maroto Morales
  • Carlos “Kaliche” Gómez Morales
• James Stinson
• Elodio Rash

Contributing via video submission:

• Pablo Aranguiz
• Chile Youth Advisory Committee:
  • Miguel Ángel Calbucoy Levin
  • Siomara Belén Oyarzo Leiva
  • Diego Adriano Cárcamo Oyarzo

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This talk is a part of the Faculty of Education’s Public Lecture Series.