What’s Next for Pathways
The story of Pathways is still being written. As we look to the next 25 years, we’re building on what we’ve learned and working alongside young people, communities and partners to shape what comes next.
Our Strategic Plan in Action
Our Strategic Plan 2025-2028, Impact By Design, sets out a three-year roadmap to strengthen the Pathways Program as the needs of young people and communities continue to change. One year into its implementation, we are making progress across all five strategic pillars and using what we are learning to guide the work ahead.
Evolving with Communities
Work to date: We worked with Program Partners and youth to explore new approaches to academic success and post-secondary transitions, with a greater role for students in program planning. We also tested a quality assurance process across four Ontario program locations and continued piloting Connex, our platform supporting the management and delivery of program services.
What’s next: We are expanding quality assurance to additional locations, exploring skilled trades partnerships and bringing our national network together at a Partnership Gathering to strengthen program delivery.
Enhancing Impact Measurement
Work to date: We worked with youth and Program Partners to identify outcomes that capture the broader role the Pathways Program plays beyond graduation. This informed new student and alumni surveys to strengthen our understanding of the program's short-, medium- and long-term outcomes.
What’s next: We will expand our enhanced measurement approach across six program locations and refine the student survey. Our 2026 Alumni Impact Survey will provide new insights into how Pathways supports young people during high school and beyond.
Enabling Financial Stability
Work to date: New and renewed private and government funding sustained core programming and gave Program Partners flexibility to respond to local priorities. Additional Government of Canada funding also strengthened the national Pathways Scholarship program.
What’s next: We will pursue long-term funding commitments and pilot enhancements to our funding model that reflect emerging community priorities.
Expanding Thought Leadership
Work to date: We strengthened our national voice on issues facing young people in low-income communities. Our flagship reports, Canada’s Hidden Youth Crisis and More Than a Village, brought national attention to the challenges facing youth and how community-based support can help prepare them for the future.
What’s next: We will continue using research and lived experience to deepen understanding of the issues facing youth and the role education can play in addressing them.
Embedding Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
Work to date: We completed an organization-wide engagement process to inform our EDI strategy, gathering perspectives from staff, Board members and Program Partner leaders to better understand the needs and experiences of young people and communities across the Pathways network.
What’s next: We will finalize our EDI strategy and begin putting its recommendations into practice across the organization, strengthening how equity informs our work and decisions.
The Next 25
The Pathways Program began with a simple belief that where a young person grows up should never determine where they end up. That belief still guides us today.
Education remains one of the strongest foundations for breaking the cycle of poverty. Yet the barriers that stand between young people and opportunity continue to change, and they rarely begin or end at the school doors.
Over the next 25 years, we want to be there wherever poverty creates a barrier to education. That means continuing to strengthen the support young people receive throughout their educational journey, while expanding our reach so that even more students and communities can benefit from the Pathways Program. Realizing that ambition will require sustained investment, strong partnerships across Canada, and a continued commitment to data-driven impact that helps us maximize our impact.
We will also continue to build on the evidence behind our work. Graduation rates and post-secondary transitions have long been the primary ways we measured the impact of the Pathways Program. Those outcomes remain central to our work, but they tell only part of the story.
Today, we know there is much more happening along the journey that helps a young person succeed.
We now recognize that graduation is influenced by many factors, including a young person’s sense of belonging, self-confidence, and connection to their community. That shift has broadened how we think about success and what we measure.
Last year, we revised our measurement framework to capture the full set of outcomes the program contributes to. The new approach will explore outcomes such as mental health literacy, as well as resilience, self-efficacy, civic engagement, and readiness for life after high school.
This work is being developed in collaboration with Pathways Program Partners and, most importantly, with young people themselves. Their experiences and priorities are helping define the indicators we will use to better understand the program’s impact and measure its success.
We know the challenges young people face will continue to change. Our commitment over the next 25 years is to ensure the Pathways Program continues to grow and evolve alongside those realities, reaching more young people with the support they need to stay in school and build the futures they choose.