The Sandbox Youth Partnership Research Project: Call for Letters of Interest

The Sandbox Project invites Letters of Interest from individuals and organizations that work in research, evaluation and knowledge mobilization to formally collaborate in a project to analyze and evaluate the youth-led initiatives of the Young Canadians Roundtable on Health (YCRH), and to generate evidence-based promising practices for youth-adult partnerships and youth engagement in the context of health and wellbeing.

Work on this collaborative project will include:

  1. Evaluating YCRH and Sandbox within the contexts of youth-adult partnerships and youth engagement by documenting and analyzing YCRH projects and initiatives to date.  This also involves interviews with key informants.
  2. Assessing YCRH’s unique ways of operating within Sandbox’s structure.
  3. Creating a replicable, evidence-based set of promising practices for youth-adult partnerships and youth engagement in Canadian and global health contexts for publication.

While we hope that the evaluation process is comprehensive, the project scope and funding are modest.  Significant preliminary research and resource evaluation is already in process in-house which will assist the prospective evaluator as they will not be starting this work from scratch.

About the YCRH and The Sandbox Project

Launched by The Sandbox Project in 2013 to empower youth voice in matters of child and youth health, the YCRH is a youth-led team made up of young people aged 15 to 30 from across Canada who provide leadership on research, discussion, independent initiatives and advocacy on issues impacting the present and future health of Canadian youth.

The Sandbox Project is the legal and administrative entity that hosts the YCRH’s youth-led activities.  The Sandbox Project is a national not-for-profit organization focused on improving the health and wellbeing of Canada’s children and youth by uniting and guiding the many groups and individuals operating within the Canadian child and youth health sector.  By providing a forum in which diverse stakeholders can work together, The Sandbox Project fosters cooperation, collaboration and the sharing of promising practices to help the entire sector make real, tangible progress towards delivering on the promise of healthier children and youth in Canada.

Letters of Interest Submission Requirements

Format and preliminary details:

  • Applicants must be Canada-based.
  • One LOI per applicant.
  • In PDF format.
  • May not exceed three pages, single-spaced and using a 12-pt. font.

Content:

  • LOI should describe in outline form the research (documentation, analysis – including methodology – and evaluation) plan.  One component of the LOI should be a short research narrative (500-word maximum) to summarize the research plan.
  • LOI should assume that the project begins on September 2017, ending on December 2017.
  • LOI should provide a rough budget estimate and breakdown.
  • LOI should include past research experience – e.g., citations or links to their past research and evaluation projects relevant to YCRH assessment, especially work on youth-adult partnerships, youth engagement and youth participation in not-for-profit and health contexts.  Preference will be given to researchers with previous work on such topics.

Please submit all LOI via email by Friday, July 7, 2017 to Eileen Valenzuela, Communications Coordinator, at evalenzuela@sandboxproject.ca.  Respondents are encouraged to submit their LOI as soon as possible.

The Sandbox Project will review the LOI and invitations for a full proposal will be sent via email to selected applicants by Friday, July 14, 2017.  Sandbox will provide a preliminary environmental scan of relevant resources, key dates and further details to those selected to submit a proposal.

For more information on the YCRH, please click here.