August 11, 2026

From listening to leadership: How Canadian youth are shaping the future of Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots

Photo: Loïk Raymond

What does it take to make environmental action truly accessible for all?

For the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada, the answer begins by listening.

Over the past year, the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada participated in the Global Outreach and Communication Mentorship (GOCOM) Program, an international initiative that brought together Jane Goodall Institute offices across eight countries to strengthen youth leadership, mentorship, and communication.

From improving digital literacy in Nepal to expanding youth-led conservation in Mali, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, and Canada, each country explored different ways to support young people as leaders in their communities.

Together, these projects demonstrated that meaningful investment in youth leadership strengthens conservation, education, and community resilience around the globe.

Canada’s contribution focused on a challenge that is often overlooked: digital scarcity in rural, remote, Northern, and Arctic communities.

Digital scarcity is about much more than owning a computer or a phone. It reflects the reality that many communities still experience unreliable internet, limited digital infrastructure, high costs, and barriers to accessing online education, leadership opportunities, and environmental programming. These challenges are felt particularly strongly in many Indigenous communities, despite the wealth of knowledge, leadership, and environmental stewardship already present there.

Rather than beginning with predetermined solutions, the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada asked a different question: How can Roots & Shoots become more accessible by learning directly from the young people who know these realities best?

Through the project, Indigenous youth leaders from remote communities participated in the Youth Advisory Council (YAC) and worked alongside Institute staff to explore how the Roots & Shoots program could better reflect their communities’ lived experiences. While the original project envisioned developing new outreach resources, the work quickly evolved into something equally valuable: understanding the conditions needed for those resources to be meaningful in the first place.

The project highlighted that accessibility extends far beyond internet connectivity.

Travel from remote communities can involve long drives to regional airports, multiple connecting flights, and limited airline options. Young people also balance employment, caregiving responsibilities, health, language accessibility, and commitments to their Nations and communities. Rather than treating these realities as barriers to overcome, the project adapted to them, shifting timelines, embracing hybrid planning where appropriate, and prioritizing relationship-building over rapid outputs.

This flexibility reflects one of the most important lessons from the GOCOM project globally: successful youth engagement is not about asking young people to fit existing programs; it is about programs adapting to youth and the communities they serve.

Throughout the project, participating youth helped shape new ideas for outreach that emphasized visual storytelling, land-based learning, and non-digital engagement. These approaches recognize that environmental leadership is already happening in communities and that conservation initiatives are strongest when they build on existing relationships, cultural practices, and local knowledge.

The project also opened exciting opportunities to apply the Tacare approach, the Jane Goodall Institute’s community-led conservation model, in Northern and Arctic contexts. Tacare begins by listening to communities, understanding local priorities, and supporting solutions that are identified by community members themselves. For the Institute in Canada, this represents an opportunity to deepen relationships with Indigenous youth while learning how community mapping and locally-led planning can strengthen Roots & Shoots in regions where conventional outreach methods are less effective.

These lessons are not unique to Canada.

Across the global GOCOM network, projects demonstrated that when young people are trusted as partners, provided with mentorship, and supported to design solutions for their own communities, they become powerful advocates for people, animals, and the environment. Whether strengthening digital skills, expanding conservation education, or creating culturally grounded communication strategies, each country contributed knowledge that will continue to strengthen the global Roots & Shoots movement.

The Jane Goodall Institute of Canada is proud to have contributed a perspective that places Indigenous youth leadership, reciprocity, and community-led decision-making at the centre of environmental education. By listening first and designing alongside communities rather than for them, this project has created a stronger foundation for future outreach in Northern and remote regions.

The GOCOM project may be officially concluded, but its most important outcome is just beginning: a growing understanding that the future of conservation depends on making space for every young person’s voice — wherever they live, whatever language they speak, and however they choose to lead.