Hello! My name is Neha, and I am currently a third-year student at the University of Waterloo in the Accounting and Financial Management program. I am very passionate about community involvement, youth engagement, and entrepreneurship & innovation! I am a part of the GreenHouse community on campus and am the founder of Innovate Consulting, a consulting firm that looks to create meaningful engagement opportunities for young people within the Waterloo Region.
What is the Future of Sustainable Transportation Discovery Lab?
The Future of Sustainable Transportation Discovery Lab was an event that was held in collaboration with the Region of Waterloo, the Faculty of Environment and GreenHouse to facilitate conversation around sustainable transportation and identify opportunities for future innovation. This event brought together regional staff, community partners, neighbors, students, and elected officials, to discuss and navigate the growing need for sustainable transportation across the Waterloo Region!
What was your role in helping to plan the Future of Sustainable Transportation Discovery Lab?
I was brought on by GreenHouse as a Youth Engagement Consultant through Innovate Consulting to help mobilize the young talent from our social impact community in Waterloo Region in support of transitioning towards sustainable transportation.
One of my key responsibilities was to create an environment where meaningful intergenerational collaboration could take place amongst the different stakeholders. To tackle this, I created a one pager with best practices and tips for strong intergenerational collaboration for each group to keep in mind as they were facilitating conversations. It was great to be able to bring this emphasis to the Discovery Lab as these types of problems require all perspectives to be included in the conversation, and for those perspectives to be equally valued and considered.
What was your experience like in helping to plan the event through a youth engagement lens?
It was a great experience, and I truly enjoyed the whole process from start to finish! I sat in on the internal meetings with the University of Waterloo team and got the chance to sit in on the external meetings with Region of Waterloo staff as well. I was so fortunate to have met so many different stakeholders throughout the process from the University of Waterloo Staff all the way to transportation experts from Mobycon!
Additionally, I found that the planning of this event was a great opportunity to bring my expertise on youth engagement to the table as I was able to provide my perspective within the meetings and address areas that often would be overlooked in the grand scheme of things.
How was your experience with the actual event itself? / How did the event go? What was your experience like at the event?
I had a wonderful time at the event, and it was so exciting to see everything come together after all our planning! I learned so much from our Mobycon keynote speakers and from the group discussions. It was truly eye-opening to learn more about what sustainable transportation looks like in other parts of the world and to hear more about other people’s experiences within the realm of sustainable transportation in Waterloo Region. Many of the key discussion points can be found through the beautiful graphic that Janet Holmes created to capture the discovery lab event.
I had the chance to facilitate part of the Discovery Lab through the Identification Activity portion of the event. For me, this brought a lot of the intergenerational collaboration pieces to life as not only were we encouraging the groups to follow these best practices, but we were embodying them ourselves through shared facilitation roles of this event.
The networking session was a blast as I was able to meet lots of different stakeholders within the region and got to know a bit more about them and their lives. I was able to have some great conversations over an amazing platter of catered snacks and left feeling inspired to continue to tackle these problems in the future.
Overall, being a part of the planning team for this event was a great experience and I highly recommend that everyone should try to attend a Discovery Lab in the future as it is an amazing way to dive deeper into a problem, meet some really cool people, and learn more about the world around us!
What is the future of Innovate Consulting?
Innovate seeks to continue to find other organizations that need assistance with engaging young people in a meaningful way. Whether that be through events, volunteer opportunities, employment, or youth advisory councils and boards, Innovate aims to create spaces across Waterloo Region that allow young people to be meaningfully engaged within their communities. Is your organization in need of youth engagement consulting? Hire Innovate to bring a youth engagement lens to your next initiative!
