Frequently Asked Questions

Each cohort kicked off with a live virtual orientation and ran for about 10 months.

The Fellowship was open to Canada Service Corps youth microgrant recipients.

Each cohort welcomed up to 250 youth aged 15-30.

Fellows could begin implementing their volunteer-led projects right away. The first months of the Fellowship were dedicated to providing resources, tools and learning, after which the focus shifted to coaching, peer learning and mentorship to support Fellows as they further established their projects.

As the Sprout Ideas Fellow, your community impact project must be at least co-designed and managed by you with a team of volunteers. You must be the one accountable for the project for the duration of the Fellowship program. You can engage with other organizations or entities as partners or fiscal sponsors.

Yes! For those who wanted to start something new, the Fellowship enabled Fellows to incubate a new project. The 10-month journey began with formalized learning and concepts to help define the mandate, goals and tasks of the initiative, then shifted to focus on project implementation and scaling with coaching, peer learning and mentorship.

In order to be eligible for this opportunity, you must have received a #RisingYouth microgrant as the lead applicant of the project or are a Canada Service Corps alumni and were involved as a team member in co-designing, incubating and/or launching the project supported by #RisingYouth community grants program.

Short-term travel and vacation shouldn't impact your ability to participate so long as you are submitting assigned deliverables, actively engaged and meeting deadlines built into the Fellowship program. All Fellows are assigned a Fellowship Support Coordinator (FSC) and it is important to keep your FSC looped in on changes to your regular schedule.

Live virtual sessions were 60 minutes long, held regularly throughout the first half of the program in both English and French.

Each Fellow was able to use a designated fundraising platform to engage in peer-to-peer and crowdsourced fundraising. TakingITGlobal provided matching donations for up to the first $1000 independently fundraised through the platform.

Absolutely! The goal was to help Fellows develop and launch their projects. The first half of the Fellowship built skills, network, community and connections; the second half focused on self-paced, independent project implementation. If a project wrapped before the end of the Fellowship, it simply meant reporting back a bit earlier.

We invite all applicants to identify any potential barriers and supports they feel would be helpful for us to know so that we can offer appropriate resources and support. We will work with you on an individual basis to ensure participation, timelines and activities are adapted to create a successful Fellowship experience.

The Peer Circles were 60-minute monthly meetings with groups of 10 Fellows, scheduled through mutual availability.

Yes. Your project can centre and serve a specific community. We encourage you to explore ways to invite others beyond that community to support, champion or participate, where appropriate.

A Community Reference is considered a best practice through not a requirement. The role of your Community Reference can vary from simply being a connection, part of your support network or more actively involved in mentoring you and incubating your project.