Uncategorized Youth Hope as Infrastructure: What Youth Are Teaching Us in a Time of Polycrisis May 26, 2026 Amy Bilodeau Youth Hope as Infrastructure: What Youth Are Teaching Us in a Time of Polycrisis Table of Contents What working with hope can look like at different levels Youth can be architects of the possible: using the structures of hope to build courageous futures. Young people today are coming of age in what many mental health organizations now call a polycrisis — a convergence of social, environmental, economic, and psychological pressures that compound one another. Climate anxiety, digital overwhelm, rising polarization, economic precarity, and global instability shape their daily reality. It’s no surprise that this can lead to disengagement or a loss of hope when the challenges feel overwhelmingly large (Ma voix compte 2025, RCJEQ). And while major youth actors like the Coalition Inter-Jeunes are mobilizing around urgent structural issues — from food insecurity and the housing crisis to homelessness, rising intolerance, and the defense of human rights — we also need to acknowledge the emotional and psychological terrain young people are navigating beneath these pressures. In this context, hope must be cultivated as a form of community infrastructure — a protective factor and a public-health priority. At CHSSN, our birds-eye view of English-speaking youth across Québec makes this clear. Their well-being is shaped not only by individual resilience, but by the ecosystems surrounding them: families, schools, peer networks, community organizations, and the broader health and social services system.This is why tools that help young people reconnect with meaning, agency, and community matter more than ever. One such tool is “Setting a Course for Hope, One Step at a Time,” developed by Mouvement Santé Mentale Québec in collaboration with CAP Santé Outaouais, and translated into English by CHSSN. While the activity itself is simple, the thinking behind it reflects a broader shift toward relational, strengths-based, community-rooted approaches to youth mental health. What working with hope can look like at different levels Coming out of a provincial meeting of the réseaux de services intégrés jeunes (RSIJ) — Québec’s youth-serving networks that bring together health, social services, and community organizations — where hope was central to the discussion, I found myself reflecting on something essential: Hope is not built in one place. It takes shape across multiple layers of the youth-serving ecosystem, where each level contributes something essential: the scaffolding, the structural supports, the tensile strength, the groundwork that allows hope to hold. At the level of community agents within a greater network+ Within the ecosystem, community agents play a crucial role in transforming hope into collective capacity. Here, hope looks like: Creating a shared map of servicesWhen youth face complex, multi-step pathways to care, the process itself can create distress. Coordinated and continuous support reduces this burden and strengthens trust. Recognizing the downstream harm of siloed workFragmented services force young people to retell their stories to new workers who may not understand their reality. This erodes trust and reinforces power imbalances. Integrated pathways are meant to repair this discontinuity of care. Leveraging diversified partners with expertise that reflects youth realitiesWhen services don’t match the lived experiences of young people, the consequences can be severe: isolation, houselessness, or disengagement from care. Helping teams must understand intersectionality, identity, and the structural barriers youth face. Ie. Anti-oppression training helps prevent the unintentional reproduction of social inequalities within services. Additionally, culturally relevant/adapted practices directly support better outcomes in marginalized communities.As one young person put it in MJSM’s Youth and Mental Health Portrait 2025: “When the help is more traumatizing than your mental illness, you figure out other ways to get help for yourself — [often in ways that create more harm.]” Investing in collaboration and knowledge-sharingYouth repeatedly highlight the need for communication between workers and across organizations. An interdisciplinary approach promotes cohesion in the care trajectory and expands care systems. An example is social prescription — a practice of public handover to complimentary community care. At the level of groups, peers, families, and schools+ Hope is cultivated through community — the everyday environments where young people learn whether their voice matters and whether their experiences are taken seriously. At this level, hope looks like: Creating spaces where youth can name what they’re carryingNormalizing emotional awareness in classrooms, community centers, sports teams, and youth programs creates room for honest conversations about wellbeing in everyday life. Modelling non-judgmental listening among adultsDestigmatizing mental health begins with the language we use and the attitudes we model. Youth consistently highlight the need to strengthen intergenerational ties. “Youth want us to take the time to explain things in depth, without assuming they won’t understand, especially on topics that are more sensitive or that frighten or confuse them. They often say that their feelings are misunderstood. Their parents (and even professionals!) minimize issues like war or the climate crisis, judge their choices and identities, laugh off their emotions or box them in with labels.” – MJSM’s Youth and Mental Health Portrait, 2025 Strengthening peer-to-peer supportCompassionate presence — without comparison, minimizing, or unsolicited advice — helps reduce shame and builds solidarity. Connection is one of the strongest protective factors for mental health. Creating opportunities for youth to act and shape decisionsAgency grows when youth can take meaningful steps, even small ones, toward improving their wellbeing or contributing to their community. Agency deepens when programming empowers them to participate in decisions, ensuring supports reflect their lived experience and real needs. At the level of one-on-one intervention+ Hope becomes personalized and practical — built through relationships where young people feel seen, respected, and supported. At this level, hope looks like: Acknowledging their struggle “For young people, being listened to and understood when they’re suffering is a mark of respect.” – MJSM’s Youth and Mental Health Portrait, 2025 Listening to youth as experts in their own livesRecognizing youth perspectives as legitimate strengthens trust. Trauma-informed and harm-reduction approaches centre the person and their context. Context matters in every conversation, reflection, and decision. Youth with lived experience are uniquely positioned to identify problems and co-construct solutions that genuinely meet their needs. Sharing decision-making power consistently leads to better outcomes. Removing barriers to participationServices must be accessible — physically, emotionally, culturally, and linguistically — so youth can fully engage. Supporting youth in identifying what already works — and the strengths they bringHelping young people map the strategies, relationships, and environments that give them stability, while recognizing strengths they may not yet see, shifts the narrative from “I’m overwhelmed” to “I have capacities I can build on.” Guiding them toward one small, achievable step forwardAgency is rebuilt through accessible actions that feel possible today. Small, meaningful moments — a conversation, a choice, a gesture of support — can have an outsized impact on a young person’s sense of possibility. Youth can be architects of the possible: using the structures of hope to build courageous futures. Across every layer of the youth-serving ecosystem one truth keeps resurfacing: hope is not all that abstract. In a time of polycrisis, it becomes a form of infrastructure, built through practices, relationships, and systems that restore a young person’s sense of possibility. This is exactly why tools like Setting a Course for Hope, One Step at a Time matter as jumping-off points. They give youth a place to start — a way to reconnect with meaning, agency, and direction. And youth are ready. They speak the language, they understand the stakes, and they are already experimenting with new tools, including AI, to support themselves and each other. They want to be partners in their own well-being. Our role is to meet them there and create the conditions where that partnership can thrive.Our collective responsibility is to ensure that every support system they encounter fuels that drive with authentic empowerment practices. When we do, we strengthen the broader infrastructure that makes hope possible. Systems must nourish young people’s capacity to imagine, to act, and to believe in a future worth moving toward. Hope is a form of infrastructure — and it is something we can build, one conversation, one community, one young person at a time. For those ready to take the next step, the tool at the heart of this reflection is available here: Setting a Course for Hope, One Step at a Time — English version translated by CHSSN Original French version by Mouvement Santé mentale Québec and CAP Santé Outaouais Sources & Further Reading Réseau des carrefours jeunesse-emploi du Québec (RCJEQ).Sondage MaVoixCompte 2025.Available at: https://mavoixcompte.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/25-002-RCJEQ-FR-RapportMVC25_v05.pdf Mouvement Jeunes et Santé Mentale.Portrait Jeunesse et Santé Mentale: Imaginer le changement ensemble — Infographics.English translation by CHSSN.(Original French resource available through Mouvement Jeunes et Santé Mentale.)Available at: https://mouvementjeunessm.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/ENG-Cahier-thematique-7-In-Short_compressed.pdf Mouvement Santé mentale Québec.Un pas, un geste, un mouvement — Full Campaign Resources.Available at : https://mouvementsmq.ca/campagnes/un-pas-un-geste-un-mouvement/ Share This Article Twitter LinkedIn Email