Help us Imagine the Future for Canada’s Kids

UNICEF Canada is working to make Canada #1 in child well-being by 2030, and we need your help. A big part of our work is thinking about the future for Canada’s kids.

Many Canadians are thinking about how the world is changing, and what it will mean for future generations. We want to understand what it will be like to be a kid in Canada in the future, and we want to think about how we can help kids live their best lives—no matter what that future holds.

We have developed an online survey to collect your ideas. The survey includes five areas of focus, ranging from how we play and learn in the future to how we connect and belong. How long the survey takes is completely up to you. You can spend less than a minute on reach focus area to give us quick insight into your ideas, or take five minutes or more to explain your ideas in depth.

We welcome and value lots of different ideas, and hope that people of any age, in any part of Canada, will help us with this work.

What is Open Foresight?

We want to understand what people notice today that might change how Canada’s kids experience childhood in the year 2030. Foresight is a process we use to think about the future. It’s not about predicting the future. Instead, foresight uses creative thinking to open our minds to the many possibilities for what might be true in the future. The more time we spend thinking about what the future might be like, the better equipped we will be to shape the preferred future we want to see.

Open Foresight is a collaborative process for understanding these possibilities for the future. It is a way of tapping into Canada’s collective knowledge to better understand what might shape the future. How are Canada’s families changing? How might an aging population affect childhood? How might technological changes shape life as a child in Canada? How will our environment change as urbanization continues? Together, we will build a picture of what the future might look like, which helps initiatives like One Youth prepare and plan for future success.

Where do we go from here?

We want as many people as possible to participate in this work. The survey questions will change over time to respond to the ideas and insight uncovered through the process. As the ideas begin to converge, we will create a set of foresight trends. These trends represent the big changes people are consistently noticing about what will change and will give us insight into what will probably matter the most in the future. We will use these to consider possible futures. These will be shared later in the year as part of the One Youth work.