WUSC’s 2019 – 2024 Strategy

Our vision is a better world for all young people.

When WUSC first began in the 1920s, our mission was to mobilize students, faculty members, and staff at Canadian universities to provide material relief to post-secondary students in post-war Europe.

Since then, we have evolved into a Canadian global development organization working in over 25 countries around the world to support the development needs of youth, their families, and their communities.

As the needs, challenges, and opportunities continue to change around us, so must we continue to evolve our mission and approach. WUSC’s 2019 – 2024 Strategy is a forward-looking and aspirational document that articulates our vision for the next generation of our work.

What’s New

• Responding to a changing global context. Many of the same challenges that drove WUSC’s work in the past continue to drive us today, including poverty, displacement, and gender inequality. Though progress has been made, these challenges have evolved in new and complex ways. Though global poverty has been declining, this reduction is uneven and has coincided with increasing inequalities. Meanwhile, the global displacement crisis has reached an all-time high. Our new strategy resituates WUSC’s work within this changing environment to ensure we continue to have the greatest impact possible.
• A revised Theory of Change. Beginning in November 2016, we consulted widely to develop our revised Theory of Change. It is a forward-looking and aspirational model that articulates how our work within three strategic themes—education, economic opportunities, and empowerment—leads to our vision of improved quality of life for all young people.
• Seven goals for the future. Our strategy presents seven organizational goals that will guide our work over the next five years.
  1. Expand durable solutions for young refugees.
  2. Reach more girls in crisis with life-changing education opportunities.
  3. Promote more inclusive policies for greater scale and more sustainable impact.
  4. Leverage new tools and resources to bring the latest advancements in technology, philanthropy, and finance to bear on global development problems.
  5. Facilitate peer-to-peer exchange opportunities among youth across the country and around the world.
  6. Continue to provide high-quality, rewarding, and safe international volunteer opportunities for Canadians.
  7. Deepen our collaboration with like-minded partners, while building new partnerships with innovative, mission-aligned organizations.

What Remains the Same

• Our commitment to youth. We believe working with and for youth, especially young women, is the most efficient, sustainable, and cost-effective way to tackle the roots of poverty.
• Our commitment to refugees. We invest in education, economic opportunities, and empowerment as pathways to improve the availability and quality of durable solutions for young refugees.
• Our commitment to Canadians. Development challenges are universal. We believe Canadian actors play an important role in addressing them. We remain committed to providing Canadian individuals and institutions with a platform through which they can channel their efforts toward our shared vision of a better world for youth. In particular, we will continue to provide new and relevant opportunities for our network of Canadian universities, colleges, and CEGEPs to engage in our programming.

With this strategy, we intend to guide our programming and provide a foundation upon which we can measure and evaluate our progress and results. We also hope to further inspire our community to help us achieve our ambitious goals for the next five years. Our network is the driving force behind our vision, our values, and our desire to continuously adapt and evolve our work so that, together, we can create the maximum positive impact for youth around the world.

Click here to read our full strategy.