Projects 2004/2005
DreamCatcher Yukon
Beverly Sembsmoen, Josh Silvertown, Sara Ehrhardt, Kevin Chan, Freddy Abnousi
Declining enrollments in northern high schools, coupled with Canada’s lowest graduation rates, inspired five Action Canada Fellows to create DreamCatcher Yukon, an online mentoring and leadership program for northern youth.
The program uses the Internet to connect northern youth with mentors from across Canada who give the youth exposure to the ‘outside world’, encourage their career choices and provide them with tangible examples of achievement. The first program of its kind in Canada, DreamCatcher Yukon incorporates aspects of northern values and initiates a process where students can take steps locally to realize their educational dreams.
The five Fellows, Beverly Sembsmoen, Josh Silvertown, Sara Ehrhardt, Kevin Chan, and Freddy Abnousi, launched a one-month pilot project at a school in Carcross, Yukon. It was so successful that the Yukon Department of Education has agreed to continue its partnership with DreamCatcher Yukon to ensure the program’s growth and success. The group is hopeful that the program may eventually spread to the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.
Currently, the average graduation rates for the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut are 57.2 percent, 43.3 percent and 25.6 percent respectively, compared to a national average, excluding Ontario, of 75.6 percent.
Says Silvertown, “We believe that an empowering, one-to-one, high-quality mentoring program will give students the confidence and skills to stay in school and pursue their dreams and aspirations.”
For more information visit www.dreamcatcheryukon.ca
Generation
Severn Cullis-Suzuki, Kris Frederickson, Ahmed Kayssi, Cynthia Mackenzie
A new book filled with personal stories from passionate young Canadian leaders offers a glimpse into a new generation that is among the first to navigate a truly global planet. They have more choices, more indecision, more global access and information, yet more global consequences and responsibility.
Organized by four Action Canada Fellows (Severn Cullis-Suzuki, Kris Frederickson, Ahmed Kayssi and Cynthia Mackenzie), Generation is a compilation of stories from 30 high-achieving young Canadians – activists, idealists and warriors – who explain how they recognized their desire to pursue their passion and how they are working to affect change.
The book is divided into four categories: personal/environmental connections; social entrepreneurship; community involvement; and political engagement. The stories highlight the innovative and empowering ways in which young people today are identifying and addressing society’s problems in these areas.
Contributors include Miali Coley, who as a teenager organized a summer-camp program to encourage the youth in her Iqaluit community to experience the outdoors, and Action Canada Fellow George Roter, who co-founded an organization of Canadian engineers that reaches across borders to help developing communities.
“This book is a celebration of how our generation is changing our world,” says Action Canada Fellow Kris Frederickson. “It’s about looking beyond anger and apathy.”
The Fellows hope that the book, to be published by Greystone Books in February 2006, will inspire and challenge its readers to get involved and help to improve the world around them. Royalties from the book will be donated to DreamCatcher, a Yukon-based youth mentorship program that connects high school students with mentors from around the country. A companion website, www.generationscanada.ca, will serve as a resource for leadership.
In addition to producing the book, the Fellows have partnered with organizations like Canada 25, D-Code and Apathy is Boring, which are all examining policies and ways to galvanize youth action and take it to the next level.
“Generation,” says Severn Cullis-Suzuki, “is our effort to profile the efforts, ideals, values, passion and accomplishments of our peers through their own inspiring words – and to encourage others to follow these role models.” Cullis-Suzuki says the group also hopes the book will be useful for decision-makers in setting policies for engaging youth.
Pokawiyak Connection
Ginger Gosnell, Jason Hein, Roxanne Joyal, Anil Patel, Ben Peterson
A new guidebook to help aboriginal organizations attract, engage and retain non-aboriginal volunteers from the business sector is the first of its kind in Canada.
Developed and created by five Action Canada Fellows, Ginger Gosnell, Jason Hein, Roxanne Joyal, Anil Patel and Ben Peterson, the guide is targeted to Canada’s 3,700 Aboriginal non-profit organizations. It addresses a pressing need, since close to 50 percent of these organizations report that their activities and aspirations are hampered by their problems in managing and training volunteers.
The guidebook, Building Partnerships for Change, explains, step-by-step, how Aboriginal organizations can build partnerships with medium and large businesses in their own communities in order to recruit, manage and retain employee volunteers from the business sector who have the professional skills they need. It also seeks to foster cross-cultural exchange and understanding.
To ensure that the project moves forward, the group will work on a pilot project with the PWC Foundation. In the longer term, the Framework Foundation will take over the project and continue to link Aboriginal groups with volunteers from the business sector. The group has also established a website to assist with distributing the guidebook and to promote further information about volunteerism.
Soil to Soul – A Tasty Trip into the Heart of Canada
Craig Cameron, Nadine Caron, Jean- Frédéric Morin, Lyndsay Poaps, George Roter
Can the food we grow and eat here in Canada reveal a national, cultural identity? Five Action Canada Fellows spent eight months exploring Canadian “terroir” – a French word evoking the complex layers of unique relationships that form around special foods and traditions within a specific region.
The group – Nadine Caron, Jean- Frédéric Morin, Lyndsay Poaps, George Roter and Craig Cameron – travelled to five Canadian communities: Charlevois, QC; the Niagara region, Ontario; La Ronge, SK; Whale Cove, NU; and Burnaby, BC for dinner parties and dialogue about terroir’s place in the Canadian identity.
Their goal was to shift Canadians’ tendency to identify people by where they have come from to an exploration of who these Canadians have become. By publicizing their project, Soil to Soul, through the media, their hope is that Canadians will better understand the connections between where they live, the natural resources that sustain them and the common cultural identity that grows from this.
The result is an interesting series of five articles detailing their adventures, conversations and discoveries, as well as media coverage that includes articles in Via Rail’s Destinations Magazine and the Vancouver Sun, and a dialogue on CBC Radio’s Sounds Like Canada.
