Charmaine, her host parent Kari, and buddy Shavanna

Hi, my name is Charmaine Putulik. I am from Naujaat, Nunavut, and I am 18 years old.

My host mom is Kari, she is wonderful. Kari is beautiful, loving and caring and does so much for us. I am so thankful that she helps us when we are feeling down and takes great care of us when we get sick.

My placement is in Ottawa and I working at the YMCA-YWCA. It is a cool placement, and it is amazing working with children 6-12 years old. We go to the park for lunch and do a lot of different activities like swimming lessons, science projects, and arts and crafts.

There are quite a lot of different things in the South compared to up North. Here we can go shopping pretty much any where and can buy things a lot cheaper. The biggest difference is the heat, sometimes it feels like the desert during summer. Culturally it is different because they hunt other animals then in North.

So far we have went shopping at the Rideau Centre, Bayshore Mall, and to other stores. We went to a restaurant called Colonade Pizza which was very good, and we were able to watch the workers make our pizza. We also saw two Jerry Cans concerts, a P!NK concert, and watched a football game.

I took this program to gain experience living away from home and prepare myself for college, as I will be going to Rankin for Management Studies in September. I am also improving on becoming less shy.

I am so proud of myself for doing NYA. This is an awesome opportunity for all the youth to come and try get use to travelling and getting the hang of things, in their own way. It really helps if you are going to go to college to learn to be organized and learning how to be away from home. If it wasn’t for this program I wouldn’t have become so independent. To all the 2017 Canadian Phase, NEXT, and International Phase Participants, thank you all for the memories and an awesome summer.