Date: October 14, 1-2 PM ET
Cost: Free (Zoom Webinar)
*Please note, all registrants will be provided with a link to the recording and presentation slides following the sessions. The recording will be available for 60 days.
Over the past three years, Apathy is Boring's work with the Sustainability Network and numerous environmental non-profit organizations has shown that the sector is not only ready, but eager, to meaningfully include more young people in its spaces, programs, and opportunities.
Along the way, we have seen organizations take important steps to improve youth-friendly practices, from rethinking recruitment and retention strategies to creating more accessible, welcoming, and impactful pathways for youth participation. Furthermore, this work has reinforced that young people are eager to contribute to environmental action, but meaningful engagement requires intentional structures that value their leadership, avoid tokenism, and create real opportunities for influence.
At the same time, these three years have highlighted the realities facing environmental organizations, particularly limited resources and capacity. In response, creativity, collaboration, and shared learning have become essential tools for strengthening youth engagement. One key lesson has been the importance of building networks among organizations, where peers can exchange ideas, problem-solve together, and sustain momentum toward more youth-friendly environmental movements. Looking ahead, the opportunity is clear: by continuing to invest in meaningful youth participation and collective action, environmental organizations can help build greener, more inclusive futures shaped by young people's voices and leadership.
Join us for a 60-minute session exploring lessons, impact, and what's ahead in working with young people on environment and sustainability.
Facilitated by Erika De Torres and Sydney Penner, this session will release a report summarizing learnings from the last 3 years with the Sustainability Network, along with an update to the Youth Friendly principles.
Our Presenters
Erika De Torres is the Director of Impact and Development at Apathy is Boring, where she has managed the RAD department for the past four years. Her interest in youth engagement and civic participation began when she was young, and she saw the importance of youth in these spaces for increased innovation and resiliency. In her spare time, she likes to play board games and walk her cat, Kimchi.
Sydney Penner is the Research and Evaluations Lead at Apathy is Boring. Following her psychology degree from Simon Fraser University, she has worked in clinical mental health and addictions and non-profit social sciences research. At AisB, her job is to evaluate our programs and research new trends in youth-related democracy. She helps make sure we're doing what we set out to do—supporting you(th)!
The DEFNP workshop series will offer tailored programming designed to match ENGOs on their decolonial (un)learning journeys. In Spring 2026 members of the ENGO sector will be able to choose one of three workshop tracks: Introduction to Decolonization in the ENGO Sector, Advanced Decolonial Theory and Application or For Indigenous Ears Only - A Space for Reflection and Action. Each series consists of four three-hour sessions.
Collectively, Decolonizing ENGO-First Nation Partnerships fosters:
Awareness of settler colonialism and the ways it potentially harnesses civil society;
Understanding about how Canadian law such as the Indian Act and the Income Tax Act has suppressed Indigenous governance systems;
Awareness that Indigenous peoples have unique inherent political and legal systems, with which ENGOs may want to form partnerships;
A better understanding about how to navigate partnerships with Indigenous communities that promote decolonial environmentalism;
A stronger sense about how to identify and explain individual and organization social locations (i.e. positionalities) as part of ethical partnership development;
Promoting the resurgence of Indigenous self-determination in the Canadian ENGO sector.
Cost: $100 (Register 2 spots, get the 3rd free)
70 participants max.
All registrants will be provided with a link to access the recordings and presentation slides for 60 days following each session.
Session 1: Settler Colonialism 101
Introduce ENGO representatives to the fact that colonization is a structure and not an event. Identifies key ways that colonialism moves through individuals and organizations.
Session 2: Positionality
ENGO representatives learn how to articulate their social location within a settler colonial state, and in relation to potential Indigenous partners.
Session 3: Inherent Indigenous Governance 101
Introduce the fact that Indigenous nations have their own sources of political authority that they can (and do) draw on when addressing environmental issues. Examples provided.
Session 4: Building Better Relations
ENGO representatives will road test ways they can implement previous workshop key points to re-imagine partnerships with Indigenous nations.
Cost: $100 (Register 2 spots, get the 3rd free)
All registrants will be provided with a link to access the recordings and presentation slides for 60 days following each session.
Session 1: Diagnosing Settler Colonialism in the Enviro Sector
Participants will be asked to share ways in which they have diagnosed and traced power in social justice movements and/or in the ENGO sector. This workshop will make space for discomfort as part of promoting decolonization.
Session 2: Inherent Indigenous Governance
A mix of advanced and introductory theory, this workshop delves into legal and political pluralism, naming the fact that Indigenous nations have their own sources of political authority that they can (and do) draw on when addressing environmental issues.
Session 3: The Nonprofit Industrial Complex
ENGO participants are introduced to theories and examples describing the Nonprofit Industrial Complex and the “Shadow State.” Purpose is to show how settler colonialism structures civil society.
Session 4: Decolonizing ENGO-First Nation Partnerships
This workshop delves deep into how ENGOs can partner with Indigenous nations beyond the Nonprofit Industrial Complex while promoting deference to inherent Indigenous political leaders.
Cost: Free
The Indigenous only space will be collaborative in nature but critical in approach. This track is a space for Indigenous folks within the ENGO sector to come together to discuss their experiences and work, with an eye to taking a position on what the sector might need to do in order to promote decolonization. Participants will use the first session to define our goals for the remaining three meetings. Therefore, session topics named here are proposals only.
Session 1: Naming the Cannibal: Settler Colonialism in the ENGO Sector
Session 2: Proposed topic: Reflections on working in the ENGO Sector
Session 3: Proposed topic: Centering Indigenous Thought in the ENGO Sector
Session 4: Proposed topic: Visioning a Decolonial Environmental Sector
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