2024 William Muir Edwards Citizenship Award — Sophia Young

Sophia Young is one of the 2024 recipients of the William Muir Edwards award.

The most significant impact of good citizenship, says Sophia Young, an environmental engineering student in the second year of her program, is empowering youth to become active citizens in their own right, equipped with the tools they will need to achieve their goals and reach their dreams.

It’s not easy. Building inclusive communities, particularly when the challenges are rife, takes vision and guts, and it is not something Sophia takes lightly — it is a passion born out of her own experience as a once disempowered youth. 

“My passion for creating more opportunities for youth stems from the disempowerment I faced when I was young,” she says. "I used to walk with my head down — straight line, straight face, not making a sound. At thirteen, I was the target of a hate crime. I was walking to a grocery store when a man pushed me to the ground, screaming slurs and filming me while I cried. However, the violence isn't what I remember from this event. Instead, I remember being down on the ground and seeing a crowd forming, but with no one stopping this man from hurting me. The crowd's inaction made me swear to never be a bystander like them. The hardships others and I faced motivated me to become an agent of change.”

One of the challenges Sophia faced was her lack of independent mobility due to various stresses on her family’s ability to drive her places, including her father’s temporary paralysis. She says that while many opportunities fell by the wayside, she was not alone. 

“Newcomer children struggled to get around the community, and my friends could not participate in after-school activities without walking 40 minutes home in the cold.”

Spurred to action, Sophia — at the age of fifteen — addressed the Regina City Council on youth transportation barriers, helping to coordinate a 200-person municipal lobbying campaign to make the bus free for all youth under the age of thirteen, which resulted in free fare for 36,000 children. To this day, she continues to advocate for better transportation for youth, securing a grant and a wellspring of community support to advocate a fare-free pilot program for youth under eighteen.

But as Sophia notes, increasing access to opportunities is meaningless if youth feel disempowered, so she began to turn her efforts to improving youth mental health. In 2022, she co-created the Miller4Nature Permaculture Club to help her community cope with the high suicide rates at her high school. Some of the club’s initiatives included Indigenous garden blessings and sweat lodge ceremonies, and the creation of a temporary school greenhouse. 

“Because of this initiative, the club has grown over 300 pounds of produce with 30 members and just created a fruit orchard last September, helping to combat food insecurity and fostering safe spaces for youth to succeed. I also co-led Worthy Purpose (2021-present) after a tent city sprung up six blocks from my high school, which inspired the Diocese of Fort Qu'Appelle to transform an abandoned church into a hub for community impact.”

Her passion for equity-based design led her to join Saskatchewan’s Youth Co-Design Team to develop four community hubs valued at $3.4 million (2023-present), which involved selecting services, evaluating providers and creating branding. It so impressed the officials, Sophia was selected to co-write and submit a journal paper on distributive leadership and how to involve youth in policies affecting their care.

These efforts, and many others, have been recognized with the Terry Fox Humanitarian Award, the TD Scholarship for Community Leadership, the Cydney Weir Environmental Leadership Award, and Sophia was named South’s Saskatchewan Young Woman of Distinction and Saskatchewan's Junior Citizen of the Year. In May 2024, she received the National Youth Climate Activism Award, issued by The Institute for Sustainability Education & Action. 

As a role model and mentor to youth, Sophia created her own TEDxRegina Talk — A youth activist's story of courage and change and volunteered as a lab instructor for the 2024 WISEST CHOICES conference to spark a long-lasting interest in STEM for young girls and gender-questioning youth.

“Being an active citizen teaches me that my ability is unlimited,” says Sophia. “By leading with kindness, I push through boundaries to serve others. I now walk with my head high — straight line, straight forward, and standing for what I believe. I am an active citizen, so I can create safe communities and empower others to be fully alive. Citizenship is a power that upholds my vow to build a better world. I will never stay silent to others' pain.”

Named in honour of the Faculty of Engineering’s founding professor, the William Muir Edwards Citizenship Award recognizes Engineering at Alberta undergraduate students who have made exceptional contributions to society. It’s a celebration of citizenship and of engineering students who go to extraordinary lengths to make our world a better place. Special thanks to the David Morris Family Foundation for supporting our students and making the William Muir Edwards Citizenship Awards possible. 

Do you know an undergraduate student whose volunteerism, contributions, and efforts, both on-campus and off-campus, work to make the world a better place? Learn more about the nomination process »