Scotiabank Impact Story: Equipping the Leaders of Tomorrow for Success

According to the United Nations Population Fund, there are over 1.8 billion young people in the world today — more than at any other time in history. These young people will grow up to become the leaders, employees and community members of tomorrow, so it’s essential for us to equip them for success now if we hope for them to contribute in the future.

Yet many young people struggle to get a leg up in the world. For example, according to Food Banks Canada, more than one third of the 850,000 Canadians who visit food banks on a monthly basis are children and youth. According to the OECD, socio-economic inequalities, compounded by gender, cultural and geographical discrimination, impede the public health system of Peru. The OECD says young women as well as youth from poor, rural and indigenous communities do not have adequate and equal access to basic health services and information. Meanwhile, education challenges lead to high unemployment rates for young people in Chile and Colombia, which are currently 16.4% and 18.9%, respectively.

Focusing our efforts

Given the challenges facing young people, we are focusing our corporate giving strategy on these issues in the communities where we operate. Ultimately, we aim to channel 70% of our philanthropic support to organizations that concentrate on these issues. This investment in the health, well-being and education of young people will allow us to invest in the long-term stability and growth of our communities while profoundly shaping the lives of tomorrow’s leaders.

Our Position

Our focus on young people reinforces a commitment to communities that began 185 years ago. Such investments are an important part of how we create a better life for the people that we serve around the world. In 2016 alone, Scotiabank contributed CAD$70 million in donations, sponsorships and other forms of assistance to communities around the world.

Digging Deeper

In order to maximize our support for young people, we wanted to have a deeper understanding of the challenges currently facing young people in the various geographic areas where we operate.

To help assess the state of health and education of young people in our communities, we engaged with the strategy consultancy GlobeScan and an advisory council of leading external experts on youth issues, drawn from countries across Latin America, the Caribbean and North America. Together, we reviewed, collated and standardized relevant publically available indicators to create Scotiabank’s Young People in the Community (YPC) Index, which will help us better understand the current state of young people in North, Central and South America.

“We see the YPC Index as a guide to help us identify where needs may be greatest,” says Jean-François Perrault, Senior Vice-President and Chief Economist at Scotiabank. “The YPC Index is also a tool to help bring youth practitioners together to improve or create policies that relate to young people, identify gaps in available data or simply pin-point problem areas and benchmark progress going forward.”

Looking Forward

The YPC Index will be launched this spring and will provide a platform for engaging with various partners in the youth development space — including governments, businesses and non-profit organizations — as they work to address these issues. As we track the Index over time, we will be able to measure society’s progress on tackling important youth challenges.

Scotiabank hopes to play a key role in addressing these challenges going forward. However, we also recognize that long term success in these areas depends on actions that are larger than any single organization. We must look at how we, as a collective society, can help move some of the YPC Index’s indicators over the long term. If we all are dedicated to helping young people in our communities, we may be able to make a difference in the future of our next generation.

Read Scotiabank’s 2016 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) report