NATASHA BLANCHET-COHEN is an Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Human Sciences at Concordia University and Graduate director of the Youth Work diploma.  Her work focuses on community youth development, child rights and participation, ecocitizenship, and developmental evaluation. She explores the opportunities for Indigenous youth in being change agents, as well as the perspectives of youth in providing for rights-based and culturally-safe services and communities. She supports youth workers in implementing empowering practices to enable young people’s well-being, and child-youth friendly spaces, places and systems. Her leadership in national and international initiatives have contributed to building the capacity of human ecologies – including federal, provincial, and municipal polices and services, and school, family and peer groups – to positively support the quality of young peoples’ lives, particularly immigrant and indigenous young people. As an interdisciplinary and engaged scholar, she has worked collaboratively in research projects with Indigenous youth in Canada, Mexico, Venezuela and Sarawak. As a member of ODENA Alliance and Dialog since 2010, she has collaborated with the Québec Native Friendship Centers and carried out multiple action research projects and developmental evaluations.