I started the NYA Next Program in Ottawa last week. During the orientation, I learned that I can step out of my comfort zone. I was also introduced to the entire Next group and we got to know each other! What I liked about orientation was that we all the programs (Canadian, Next, International) all got together and we got to meet each other. During orientation, we took part in sessions, learned, and did assignments. I am currently staying in Algonquin College for around 5 weeks. My roommate is Megan from Hall Beach, Nunavut.

I also got to tour Parliament Hill with the Next group and it was my first time inside! I also went inside the Government of Nunavut building. My favourite thing about Parliament Hill is the library , because not many people get to see it as it is private. I learned so much about the Parliament Building’s history. After that, we went to shop for a bit.

During the weekend, we went to the beach and had so much fun. I learned how to float in the water. The sand was very hot and burned my feet a little but after a while I got used to walking on it. On Tuesday, we started classes and the first thing we are making is picture frames. After that, we will get to make a dog house. I’m enjoying the class. Since I got to Algonquin College, I started to get up early in the morning by myself. We practised our presentations about Nunavut and the Northwest Territories for a couple of days to the other participants and everyone seemed to love our presentation which made it a great experience. I was surprised that some people don’t know about the north and kids had so many questions about the north and were adorable. My favourite thing about this week is the presentation and the beach. I had so much fun.

I am so appreciative that I get to take part in the Next program and learn how to be at college in the south and take care of myself. I’m gaining more confidence, independence, and having new experiences. Next is a very amazing program! I’m enjoying every second of this summer, This is a great opportunity. Thanks for reading my blog!

Hi! This is Annie. I am having the time of my life at Algonquin. This is definitely one of the best experiences I’ve had so far in my eighteen years of life. My NYA family is very supportive, and I can count on them to make me feel better if needed. I’ve only had one bad day, but that was not anyone’s fault but my own. During our week in the city, we have gone to the beach. Some of my friends and I have gone on what we like calling “adventures” to different stores. We explored around the Rideau Centre going up and down the escalators. One of the other participants and I went to a dress shop to look for a new summer dress. We were there for a while, up until we saw how much they cost. One of the dresses I liked costs over $200. We could not afford that, so we calmly walked out. It was my first time swimming at the beach, and feeling the sand burning my feet. It was really fun and I learned how to back stroke without my arms. We’re going camping this weekend and I am really looking forward to it. I overheard the leaders talking about s’mores!

My favourite memory so far has been going to the Giant Tiger. We went as a small group, as the leaders had let us gone alone. It really was like an adventure. First, we tried going to the bus stop everyone trusts, only the realize there was one way closer to the campus. During the bus ride there, everyone was laughing. We all rushed over, but somebody forgot their bus pass! He had to run all the way back to campus and not miss the bus. Two of them went to other places while the rest of us went in the store. After a while, I saw the video game section that was in a small corner. While everyone was shopping, I sat down and looked at all the games and DVDs. I hadn’t heard them, too engrossed in what I was looking at. Once I got up, there was an employee pointing at me saying “is-is that her?” Shannon and Stanley never trusted me being alone ever again. I find it really funny, they thought I had left the store and wandered off. I blame their bad detective skills. 

The classes we have are very fun. The one we all know best is shop class. Our teacher Doug has an iconic saying. We say it all the time jokingly: “nice and easy”. I swear if you were to hear it, it would never be the same. I am forever grateful for programs like Northern Youth Abroad. It helps out way more than I had originally thought. That’s about it for this blog post. I hope you had fun reading, and goodbye!

3,2,1 … The Countdown Is On!

Only a few days until Orientation! Starting Tuesday and up until Friday, Participants will be leaving their home communities in the North to travel all the way South to Ottawa. Staff will be waiting at the airport to welcome the 2018 Participants to the NYA family. Participants will travel to Orientation, where they will spend the next week meeting friends, adjusting to the South, and learning everything they will need for their adventure ahead! Before we know it, Participants will be on their way to their final travel destinations – from four different provinces in Southern Canada, Ottawa, and Costa Rica.

Each Canadian Program Participant has now been paired with a Buddy and a Host Family, from Host Communities that span from British Columbia all the way to Newfoundland. After months of planning, we are happy to announce that we have secured the Participant Volunteer Workplaces for all of the Participants! These Work Placements will not only allow Participants to gain high school credits, but will give them the opportunity to gain real work experience and to connect wth their Host Communities.

We are also getting ready for the Next team that will be staying at Algonquin College in Ottawa! They will be staying in the college residences and experiencing what it is like to live on a post-secondary campus. The Next Participant Achievement Coach has been hard at work to make the Next Program as beneficial (and as fun!) as possible. The Next Program has a lot in store for Participants this year!

Last but not least, the International Program is ready for Costa Rica! NYA is partnering with local organizations United World Colleges, Outward Bound, and CIRENAS. The itinerary is fully loaded and will include volunteering, hiking, cultural learning, and a few fun excursions along the way. We are making sure that the Participants are ready for a few weeks in the jungle by gathering hiking boots, headlamps, backpacks – just to name a few! The International Group Leaders are excited to meet their Participants at Orientation.

Interested in keeping updated this summer? Be sure to follow all of our accounts at: Facebook.com/NorthernYouthAbroad ~ Instagram @NorthenYouthAbroad ~ Twitter @NYANewsfeed

Here at NYA we are gearing up for another exciting summer! With Participants arriving next month, we are very busy but equally excited for the months ahead. Read below to see what’s going on this summer.

Orientation

With almost month until Participants fly into Ottawa, we can’t wait to meet them all and welcome them to MacSkimming Outdoor Education Centre for Orientation. During this one week long camp, the Participants will engage in facilitated training sessions covering a range of topics including: communication, problem solving, and conflict resolution. These sessions provide Participants with the skills necessary to build positive relationships with other Participants, their host family, and their volunteer work placements.

Host Communities

We have selected our Host Communities for the Canadian Program this summer. These communities are where our Participants will call home for 5 weeks. The Participants will be volunteering in their host community and will have the chance to explore their home away from home. A big thank you to all of our Host Families for dedicating their time and efforts in supporting our youth!

International Program

NYA’s International team is returning to Costa Rica this summer! We are partnering with United World College, Outward Bound, and Serenis to give our International Participants a very rewarding travel and cross-cultural learning experience. Participants will spend 6 weeks contributing to local volunteer initiatives and engaging in cultural exchange. Activities completed will include: engaging in service learning workshops focused on conservation and permaculture; completing inter-cultural workshops with local NGOs; and taking part in experiential land based excursions.

Next Program

NYA Next is heading back to Algonquin College this year for more goal setting and achievement, educational opportunities, personal growth, cultural awareness and career preparation! Participants will be staying in the Algonquin Residences while completing a constructions and trades course and volunteering. They will also be completing individual Personal Learning Projects and will be going on group out trips like camping.

A Special Milestone

This year NYA is celebrating a very special milestone. At the end of the summer, NYA will have over 500 Alumni! On top of the over 5000 high school credits awarded, over 75,000 volunteer hours completed and 65 Alumni bursaries that will be awarded after this year, that means that over 500 Northern Youth will have successfully completed one or more of NYA’s core programs. We are so proud of all our Alumni and can’t wait to see what the future holds for them.

The day has finally come! We have been working over the past several months with AIME, a leader in providing amazing opportunities for Indigenous Youth in Australia. We have put together an opportunity for one NYA Alumni to live and work in Australia this summer with AIME, and one AIME ambassador to come to Canada to live and work with NYA. After lots of preparations, packing, visas logistics, and a some long hours spent on airplanes… we are pleased to announce that Sean has arrived! We are so excited to have Sean here with us for the summer and feel it is an incredible opportunity for our organization to learn and grow! Read below for an introduction form Sean.

“Hi my name is Sean, I am staying in Ottawa and working with Northern Youth Abroad as part of an exchange program between NYA and AIME (Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience). I am 24 years old, I am studying a Bachelor of Arts at University. I work for an organization called AIME (Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience) who work closely with indigenous high school kids to see them develop and further there studies through high school, and help build a pathway from high school to university. I’ve been involved with AIME for 5 years, 3 years as a volunteer and 2 years as an employee. I am looking forward to working with NYA as a way of collaborating and learning new ideas from the similar programs.”

Hi my name is Hayven. I was placed in Ottawa and I worked at a bakery this summer.

Working at the bakery was fun. It was hard work but I love it. My boss Jeff was fun to hang out with and I would bake a lot of different things and every day I would do something else like cleaning. My host family is fun, they have really cute kids and its really fun. It’s different because I always have to be up in the morning to make a plan before doing anything. At first it was hard but I got use to a few things and it got easier.

My favourite thing about this trip was going for a long walk with my host mother, Jess and Komaki (my host sister). We walked to the Kontinuum which is a place where you see all these amazing lights then we walked thorough a street fair where we saw a lot of people dancing and doing cool tricks. It was my first time walking on a really long bridge and it was fun because we saw a lot of cool views like the parliament and the boats. Doing this trip was fun and I got to do new things, meet new people, live with an amazing host family, and work with amazing people. It is a good experience.

My name is Tegan Nitsiza and I am from the Northwest Territories and my work placement was at the YMCA in it was in Collingwood Ontario. The town was pretty big, bigger than any town/city in the north. There was about 22 thousand people living in Collingwood itself. The weather there was usually hot and at night it was usually chilly out.  The name of my host parents were Sandra Dodgson and Bruce Dodgson and the have 2 sons but they moved out and they have their own family, they had no pets. At my work placement I had to watch the kids and I had to do activities such as basketball, floor hockey, soccer, art and much more.My placement buddy is John Noksana and he is from Tuktoyaktuk NWT. We got along great.

I had the chance to use a stand up board and I had an amazing time at my placement.  and I tried DQ and Wendy’s for the first time. Me and John had the opportunity to check out the Elvis festival in Collingwood and it was there for the whole weekend so we went there through out that weekend. I had a great time during this program and I hope to encourage youth from my community to sign up for this amazing program.

Hi, I’m Diana Williah and I am from Behchoko, Northwest Territories. I am a participant in the Canadian program for Northern Youth Abroad. And I’m placed in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

My work placement is at Cole Harbour Place summer camp. I work as a youth leader, and I work with kids aged 5-12 with almost 90 kids at the camp. It’s great working there because I would like to become a teacher one day. In my workplace there is at least 4 or 3 camps the kids could go to for one week and each week is different. I normally go with the “crazy chefs” and in that camp I help the kids make healthy snacks that could be made at home. Afterwards, me and all the other leaders take the kids swimming for an hour.

My host parents are Letitia and John Elliott. They have two kids but only one lives here because the other one is in his 20s. And they also have 5 cats. Cleo is my favourite cat My host family is great and so far they’ve taken me down to Saint johns, New Brunswick, Peggy’s cove, a trampoline park, and Halifax which is just across the ocean.

Living in Dartmouth is a lot different than from back home. That’s saying a lot coming from a community of about 2000 people. I live in a suburban type neighbourhood so everything is a 10 min ride or so, unlike back home where everything is in walking distance. It took some time getting used to, but I got used to it. Here I take the bus into town, and getting use to taking buses wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. The stores are so different because it costs a bit cheaper than in the north.

I have done a little bit of traveling. We went to a zoo, and also went to a trampoline park for the first time and I absolutely loved it. We also went to a farmers market and got a henna done there. If you don’t know what a henna is, it’s basically a temporary tattoo that lasts about a week or two. Also I have been to a “Maritime museum of the Atlantic” and it was so interesting to see, so much so I wouldn’t mind going to another museum. And I also went to a tall ship event where ships from all around the world which is an event that only happens every 4 years. So I was lucky to experience that. During the event you can go on the ships and take a look around. I also went go karting and saw a parade for natal where I got to see Sidney Crosby.

Being a part of the program has been great so far. I would definitely come back to Nova Scotia just because it’s such a beautiful place. I’d recommend NYA to my friends and family back home because it’s such a great way to get out of town and experience something different, try new things and also get you ready for when you go to college by becoming more independent and more confident with the city life.

Thanks for reading 🙂

Hi my name is Kathleen Gill and I am from Fort Smith, Northwest Territories.

I am 22 years old and participating in the NYA NEXT program in Ottawa where we stay at Algonquin College for 6 weeks and do a variety of things like construction class, science class, mock trials, and present to groups of people who know little to none about Nunavut and the Northwest Territories.

Leading up to Nunavut Day, our schedule was busy so we didn’t have anything planned for that particular day. As the day goes on it’s early afternoon and one of our participants Allie knows the aboriginal singer Kelly Fraser was performing in downtown Ottawa.

So our group leader Lindsay rounds up a small group of us and we leave the college residence at 6:30 to make it downtown for 7:30. As we’re walking to the bus stop Lindsay goes “That’s our bus, RUN!.“ so we all take off and catch the bus. Then quickly realize we’re going in the wrong direction. We get off at the next stop, wait for the right bus and make our way. We wander around for a bit, find where Kelly is going to sing and start asking around where we can find her. Two nice ladies tell us “Oh…..she just finished up”. They pointed us in the direction she was performing and she was still hanging around the area so we briefly got to talk to her and got a group picture. Afterwards we got to explore a little.

We went to Parliament Hill, Rideau Canal, added some things to a scavenger hunt that is for next years’ NYA NEXT participants. All throughout the evening there were many times Lindsay made us run against our will but with good intention. After more exploring we got on a bus (the right one), head back to residence and crash on account of such a good night.

I look forward to more adventures with my group.