Applied youth research · Toronto & beyond

Better decisions with young people.

Loudly Labs is a youth-led think tank that helps organizations answer questions about the young people they serve. We co-create research, dialogue, and summits with youth, turning their perspectives into decisions organizations can act on and ideas young people can carry forward.

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Our purpose

The people most affected are often furthest from the decision.

A program can have funding, good intentions, and a polished strategy—and still miss the people it is meant to reach. Young people are often invited in after the key decisions are made. Their answers become a report, while the reasons they disengage and the solutions they imagine go unexplored.

We close that gap by making young people collaborators in applied research, not just respondents. Together we frame the question, gather perspectives, make sense of the findings, and shape what happens next. Partners get evidence and recommendations for a real decision; youth get a meaningful role in developing and advancing solutions.

One connected process

Ask. Learn. Act.

Every project starts with a decision someone needs to make and a question young people should help answer. Our process connects credible research with a practical next step.

01

Define the question together

We work with a partner and young collaborators to identify the decision at hand, whose perspectives are missing, and the right research approach.

02

Research with young people

Through interviews, focus groups, sustained dialogue, pop-ups, and summits, we gather and interpret insight with young people across experiences and viewpoints.

03

Make a move

We deliver a clear brief, recommendations, or evaluation framework. Where the work calls for it, we help youth and partners test an idea, shape a pilot, or bring findings to decision-makers.

Work with the lab

Bring us the decision you need to make.

We take on commissioned projects for nonprofits, public agencies, schools, and purpose-driven teams developing programs, policies, campaigns, or products that affect young people. Tell us what you need to understand or decide. We will scope a youth-led process and a deliverable your team can actually use.

01

Research sprints

A defined question, youth-informed interviews or focus groups, analysis, and a concise brief with findings and recommendations for your next decision.

02

Youth summits & dialogue

Facilitated gatherings across differences that bring youth and decision-makers together, surface new ideas, and produce a record of what should happen next.

03

Co-design & evaluation

Workshops, pilot plans, and youth-defined measures that help teams test solutions and understand changes in trust, belonging, and agency.

Discuss a project with us ↗
Inside the lab

Four ways to make ideas travel.

Projects for Tackling Wicked Problems and Growing Healthy Collaboration.

Dialogue · SDIT

Sustained Dialogue Institute of Toronto

Sustained dialogue brings people into recurring, facilitated conversations across differences. We use it to reduce polarization, find shared questions, and cross-pollinate ideas across campuses such as U of T, public pop-ups, and spaces with younger students.

Incubation

The Swarm Incubator

Like a bee swarm leaving its colony to build something new, promising ideas can grow beyond the conversation. We help youth teams develop those ideas into projects or recommendations for policymakers and partners, with panels and guest speakers bringing expertise into the room.

Cooperative Space

The Hive

An interdisciplinary hub for creative people to collaborate, focus on their work, and build relationships through social gatherings.

Research

Measuring What Matters

We ask young people how they want to engage and what meaningful change feels like. Together we develop qualitative indicators and practical ways to evaluate trust, belonging, agency, and other outcomes that numbers alone can miss.

Why we started

Building for a better world.

We met at the University of Toronto and kept returning to the same question: how do we move from polarization and disconnection toward something people can build together?

Our experiences in research, community events, policy, and media showed us a gap between what communities know and what institutions are able to act on. Loudly Labs grew from a shared conviction that dialogue should lead somewhere, and that people should help define the impact of the work they create.

The co-founders

Meet Isabella & Joonsup.

Co-founders Joon and Isabella standing back to back

Joonsup Yoon

Co-founder

Joon is a student from Korea studying how global economic systems shape everyday life and how structural designs make opportunities more accessible. He researches and works in trade, monetary policy, and institutional power as tools to improve daily life. In the past few years, he has launched a variety of community development and entrepreneurial programs for students.

Isabella Wen

Co-founder

Isabella creates social-first content for morally ambitious youth and became obsessed with all kinds of media, expanding her advocacy to podcasting, research, and event hosting. She has been recognized by UNICEF Canada and The National Observer, and spoke on CBC The Current about emerging technologies.

Funders & supporters

In good company.

Support and collaboration help youth-led ideas reach further.

Open-access research & tools

Measure the things that move us.

Explore examples of applied youth research: from measuring social connection to shaping practical recommendations for local policy.

Research · Working Paper 01

Measuring What Matters

Youth definitions of relational impact in social change, based on a participatory research pilot in Metro Vancouver.

Read the working paper
Applied tool · v1.0

Relational Impact Measurement Toolkit

A practical framework organizations can use to bring youth-defined indicators into evaluation and program design.

Open the toolkit
Commissioned policy brief · Vancouver

Youth Priorities for Parks & Recreation

Focus group findings for Vancouver Park Board commissioner candidates, prepared through the BC Youth Council. Young people identified priorities in green space, affordable recreation, mobility, and civic participation, with concrete policy recommendations.

Read the youth policy brief