Hello everyone! My name is Asiina Saila. I’m 18 years old, and I’m from a community called Kinngait, Nunavut, formerly known as Cape Dorset. My hometown has a population of roughly 1,400 people. It’s a small community known for its famous Inuit artwork location on Baffin Island, home to beautiful, talented, and wonderful artists. <3

I am currently participating in the Northern Youth Abroad (NYA) as a Next participant. My time with NYA has been such an inspiration to my life, it has shown me what I am capable of doing and taking on, it has been an honour to have been selected to participate in this amazing program, not only has it given me an incredible experience it has shown me so many opportunities that I can take on, and that I can face any challenges that come my way. We’ve been here for roughly 3 weeks now, and I’ve gotten a chance to meet so many wonderful people. I’ve done so much in that time already that I’ve learnt so much.

My time with NYA has been just so valuable to me that it has affected my life in such a good way, it’s giving me an opportunity to learn all new things and to take on new tasks that I am not familiar with, but still get through with it. The first activity we did in the trades area was welding, and I was very nervous, but I got through it and learned many interesting things about welding. At first I thought it wasn’t for me, which kinda still isn’t, but hey, I got to weld and learned to experience what it’s like to weld, I made cute little projects that I’m very eager to take Home to show everyone ☺️

This program isn’t just about learning skills, it’s about learning who you are. It’s helped me understand that I can learn to be more and become more confident, independent, and open to learning new things.

My favourite part of what has happened in the program is going to the Mechanical workshop, where we learned how vehicles operate, what parts of a vehicle are used for what, and how they function. The best part was learning how to change a tire! I’m so excited to go back home, and now I know how to change a tire if I need to! Haha

We’ve accomplished so much in the last 3 weeks that we’ve been in Ottawa, in the meantime, we’ve been staying at the Algonquin College which has been an amazing experience as it shows us what it’s like staying at a dorm and how’s college students live, We’ve been learning a lot about post secondary education and I feel blessed to have this experience as it’s giving me a sense of what post secondary is all about and what are all the benefits and challenges.

I’ve gone to a few different places to do some volunteer work, and it’s really amazing how things work down here and how much of the community works together to get things done.

One of the cool things we’ve got to do was Tour the parliament building as A special guest for Lori Idlout and I got to learn about how her job works and all, got to see beautiful paintings and what the meanings are in the rooms, I was even able to get a picture of myself sitting on one of their seats at the House of Commons!! We got to talk to Lori and learn about her roles and how things work, which I found pretty interesting! Lori Idlout, our MP!!