Communities Building Youth Futures (CBYF) is looking to bump up graduation rates and get youth active in Portage.

Community Connector Morag Morison says one of the biggest goals for the CBYF is raising the percentage of graduates within Portage schools. She goes into detail on how the city's graduation numbers are much lower than other Manitoba communities.

"Portage definitely has less than provincial average," says Morison. "The last year of data we have is from 2019, and the graduation rate in Portage was 72.5% compared to the provincial average of 85.1%."

She adds that they have four different focuses, these being youth engagement, mental health, education, and employment. Morison says everything they choose to work on falls into one of these categories and they make sure to work with multiple organizations and businesses in the community. She explains that they haven't been able to get all four categories running at once.

"We're particularly interested in having young people ages 15-30," says Morison. "As well as people who work with young people or care about young people in the community. So far we've launched youth engagement and mental health."

She adds they plan to launch the education and employment focuses later in the summer, and possibly in the fall. To learn more, visit their Facebook page here.