Author: ementoring

Another full but successful trip!  It’s amazing how much you can accomplish in two days and eight meetings.  Special thanks to Johanna Sam from UBC-O who helped us accomplish so much.  The goals of this trip were to start a plan on how to recruit mentors from UBC-O and further develop our partnership with School District 23 and Westbank First Nation.  We met with a variety of interesting and passionate people, including Aboriginal educators, school administrators, university administrators, artists, students and a coyote. All believed in the usefulness of the program and the potential of eMentoring to make a positive impact (except perhaps the coyote)….but who knows 🙂

Accomplishments included getting four UBC Departments on board to recruit mentors, meeting with over 30 Aboriginal Advocates from School District 23, continuing the conversation with the school district on how to implement eMentoring in a way that complements the ongoing work within the district and answer some research questions they had about mentoring Aboriginal students in general.

Issues raised that continue to resonate with communities include: the question of having the mentees and mentors remain anonymous and what type of mentee we should be offering this opportunity.  For the most part when we go on these trips, people have concerns about mentees and mentors remaining anonymous for a number of reasons.  One is that kids are highly likely to want to tell their mentor specific information about them.  As a parent, some people we met with were concerned that parents wouldn’t let their kids be mentored by someone anonymous.   What do you think?  

Ended the trip with some Frisbee and waterslides!  We had to do something to beat the Canucks-no-sun blues.

We had a chance to visit the beautiful Kootenays on May 22-25.  Overall, a really productive trip! Went into it thinking we weren’t organized enough and hadn’t planned enough meetings.  But as it turned out we got more accomplished than we imagined.  The main purpose of our trip was to meet with members of Akisq’nuk First Nation near Invermere, BC.  Akisq’nuk is one of four communities within the Ktunaxa (teh-NUH-hah) Nation within Canada.  Their traditional territory extends down into the States. Akisq’nuk Chief and council were very supportive and agreed to go forward with the program.  That same day, we held a community info session and had a pretty good turnout: about 20 parents, kids, and community members in total.  We asked the kids what their least favourite and most favourite subject was in school and who was their role model.  For many kids we had to explain what “role model” meant, which made us think we should change the questions to “who do you look up to?”

The next day had lots of surprises.  At first we thought we’d have a lot of time to kill before our flight in the evening as we only scheduled two meetings.  One of these meetings was with a wonderful Aboriginal Support Workers at David Thompson Secondary School in Invermere.  She was very excited about the program and suggested her students be able to take it for credit.  She had some good suggestions too, such as making a virtual café for mentees to talk to each other and identifying which students would really need an Aboriginal mentor versus those that would be ok with a non-Aboriginal mentor.

After that we drove to Cranbrook to wait for our flight.  Little did we know that we’d be chatting in Aq’am (St. Mary’s Band in Cranbrook) for most of the day and getting the Aq’am Education Director on board too.  It all started with a drop-in visit to Nigel (our co-worker on another project).  We were reminiscing about the music workshop we planned a few years ago and he asked us to follow him to the basement of the band office, where he gave us a copy of a totally AWESOME CD called “Ktunaxa Pop” – a collection of techno kids songs sung in in Ktunaxa that they’ve been using in the daycare.  Anyways, I digress, but digression is how we got things done this trip!  That’s when we met the education director who we chatted with about first the CD, then eMentoring.  Next thing we know, she’s inviting us into her office and figuring out how to bring eMentoring to their school.  Couldn’t have planned that!

eMentoringBC is an online program that connects Aboriginal youth with mentors that are 100% dedicated to helping you figure out what career you want and how to get there! As this is a new program, we are just getting ready to launch in Sept 2011. In the meantime, there are many exciting opportunities for you to be aware of and possibly get involved. The first is that WE NEED A LOGO, and are having a logo contest! As this program is for Aboriginal youth, we’d love to have our logo designed by the people this program is serving.

Up for grabs is a brand, new iPod Nano!

Please feel free to get the word out about this logo contest to any Aboriginal high school students you know.

MAIL ENTRIES by Apr 15, 2011 TO:

Katherine Wisener
855 West 10th Ave.
Vancouver, BC  V5Z 1L7
We look forward to seeing your submissions!