Youth Employment Services

About Youth Employment Services:

In 1968, The Rotary Club of Toronto founded the first specialized youth employment and counselling centre in Canada, Youth Employment Services (YES). Today, YES is the largest youth employment counselling centre in Canada, providing youth employment, job training, entrepreneurship, and empowerment programs. The charity focuses on serving young people with barriers to employment, such as homelessness, a lack of formal education, a criminal record, and drug abuse. YES believes that employment is empowerment and leads to safe and healthy communities. YES works to empower disadvantaged and vulnerable youth to become self-sufficient, contributing members of society.

Youth Employment Services provides young people with professional counselling and training. Its training techniques are used as a teaching model for other employment services across Canada and around the world. In F2017, YES helped 10,595 youth, 9,975 of which participated in its programs and 620 attended its workshops.  Of the total youth, 61% were under 25, 16% were new Canadians, 58% had at most a Grade 12 education, 22% were out of work, school, or training for over a year, 52% were male, 47% were female, and 1% were trans. The charity worked with 1,814 employees to help youth secure work placements.

Results and Impact: Youth Employment Services reports an 86% success rate in job, training, or education in F2017. By working with 1,814 employers, the charity placed 1,495 youth into work experience positions. Of these positions, 66% of the business types were service, 19% retail, 3% manufacturing, and 11% other; 87% of the business sectors were private, 7% public, and 6% not-for-profit; and 42% of the business sizes were between 1 and 10 employees, 39% between 11 and 50, 15% between 51 and 500, and 4% over 500. YES found employment for 214 youth with disabilities and reported that 2,155 clients who had no income or had relied on social insurance became more financially secure.

Financial Review:

With donations of $613k in F2017, Youth Employment Services is a Small charity in terms of donations. Administrative costs were 4% of revenues and fundraising costs were 14% of donations. For every dollar donated, 82 cents go to the cause, falling within Ci’s reasonable range for overhead spending. YES has funding reserves of $6.6m, which cover under 7 months of program costs, indicating a funding need. In F2017, YES received $11.9m in funding from the government, representing 92% of total revenue.

Updated on July 27, 2018 by Joeyanne Cheung.