Clyde River Leadership

We ran a very powerful culturally adapted leadership program in Clyde River. Youth from communities across Nunavut were brought in and it was amazing to see new friendships form that according to the youth, will last a lifetime. Once again we were partnered with Ilisaqsivik Society and we had Elders involved throughout the week. We examined how Inuit leadership is different than that in the south and had an incredible day where they learned leadership by doing it -where they all had to teach really young hyper kids dance routines and run a competition. This honors one of the Inuit traditional values of Learning by doing. We also had some special guest from The National Aboriginal Health Organization and they created a number of public service announcements with the youth for healthy living and suicide prevention. These are really great as the youth spoke from their hearts. It was also a tough week as there was a local suicide in the community, and this triggered many of the youth in our program with memories of their own. But with local counseling support and special sessions run by BluePrints Steve Leafloor on grief, the youth pulled together to support each other and some strength grew out of this tragic event. Some of these youth have gone on to be BluePrintForLife junior staff and have traveled to other communities with us employed by Blueprint.