The Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency (SPSA) announced earlier this week that it is accepting applications for a new Youth Preparedness Council (YPC).
This council is designed for Saskatchewan students in Grades 8 to 12 who have a passion for public safety, emergency preparedness and community leadership.
The YPC provides a platform for youth to share their ideas, engage in collaborative projects and gain firsthand experience in emergency management and public education.
Chris Grosy, director of public education and enterprise projects for Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency, said the Council is for students with a passion for disaster preparedness and helping their communities.
“They have to complete emergency preparedness projects, locally and provincially,” Grosy explained. “These members will work through their various interests that they’re passionate about, ranging from climate resilience, community resiliency, (and) emergency management within the public safety fields. We want them to be able to create educational tools, (and) outreach programs. The students will learn to play a key role in building safer futures across Saskatchewan.”
Grosy said the idea came from a SaskPower table talk exercise with agencies and crown corporations two year ago. The subject was disaster recovery planning to ensure business continuity.
“Staff had gone to it and they came back to the office,” Grosy said. “It kind of tweaked the idea for myself that one of the focuses we need to hit on was youth and teenagers because (if) there’s the blackout, what are youth dependent on? Their cell phones. What would they do without them?
“That made me think about how can we engage youth in our public safety service sector, and so (we’re) coming up to create a council similar to SRC’s, but in our field. (It) will teach them opportunities through mentorship from experienced employees in all the sectors.”
Grosy said they also wanted to create an opportunity for students to work on interviewing skills, resume building and project management tools and development and create an opportunity for the future generation to work in the sector. Grosy said the public safety sector will be losing employees to attrition over the next several years. He said members of the council could be drawn on to be valued members of the workforce in their communities.
He said the public education aspect of the position focuses on children and adults, but there is a growing need to target youth since they are the future.
This council will help create new people to do the jobs in the sector, according to Grosy.
“We have done this pilot where we took on two students and what a great representation these two gentlemen have been,” he said. “One is really more field oriented focused and the one was probably more operational corporate focused, so you got a good bookend of passion
and interest and opportunities to really help us develop this course and who will then also be leaders as we roll out the pilot into a program this fall across Saskatchewan.”
Selected members will serve on the council from September 2025 to June 2026. Members will be expected to participate in regularly scheduled virtual meetings that will consist of learning opportunities, project support and other collaborative activities.
For more information and to complete an application form, please visit: https://www.saskpublicsafety.ca/at-home/youth-programs.
The 2025 YPC application period is open until July 14, 2025. If you have any further questions about the YPC, please email youthpreparednesscouncil@gov.sk.ca.
“Go to our website Saskpublicsafety.ca for the applications and more information and the closing deadline for students to apply is July 14,” Grosy said.
michael.oleksyn@paherald.sk.ca
