Identifying Barriers and Improving Inclusion for Somali Youth

Identifying Barriers Faced by Ottawa Somali Youth in Accessing Post-Secondary and Vocational Opportunities

Picture of Advisory Committee of Identifying Barriers project — Clockwise from top left: Zoey Feder, Administrative Assistant, CSPSC; Katherine Occhiuto, Research Assistant; Adje van de Sande, Principal Investigator & Chair, CSPSC; Fadi El Masry, Executive Assistant, Office of John Fraser; Abdirizak Karod, Executive Director, SCFS; Abid Jan, Executive Director, AMA; Mohamoud Hagi-Aden, Counsellor/Consultant; Ahmed Hussein, Research Assistant; Ismail Hagi-Aden, Research Assistant; Tara McWhinney, Research Assistant; Absent: Jennifer Colpitts, Research Assistant

About the Project

With generous support from the Ontario Trillium Foundation’s (OTF) Seed Grant program, the Somali Centre for Family Services (SCFS) partnered with Centre for Studies on Poverty and Social Citizenship (CSPSC) to undertake a community-based participatory needs assessment. The goal of this needs assessment was to identify and address the barriers that prevent Somali Youth within the Ottawa area from seeking out and enrolling in post-secondary education or employment-related training.

Over the course of two weeks, the research team ran 4 focus groups to collect input from Somali youth regarding their own experiences in seeking out vocational training, and enrolling in college and university programs. In carrying out this research, the SCFS’s main objective was to address social and economic exclusion locally by inviting Somali youth (age 19-30) from the Ottawa.

The CSPSC Research Centre and the SCFS decided to use a community-based participatory approach to this research, where members of the Somali Centre and Muslim Community would participate on an advisory committee and where youth from the Somali Community would be directly involved in all phases of the research.

Five themes were identified during the analysis;