Hello, my name is Haileigh-Ann, and I am 17 years old. I am from a small community in the Northwest Territories called Tsiigehtchic. I and 14 other participants were selected for the Northern Youth Abroad Next summer program in Ottawa. This program is meant to give youth from the north an opportunity to experience life down south. In the program, you are meant to volunteer at different places and gain work experience through trades classes. You are also assigned different tasks as a group, like presenting our local communities and culture to places down south. The reason I am here is to get a better understanding of how the collage/university life would be. I’m also trying to get my grade 12 credits, so I can graduate high school in 2025 (woohoo!)

At first, I was really scared to travel away from home, and had the urge to cancel a few times. However, I reminded myself over and over again that I was more excited than nervous, and went through with my plan. I’m really glad that I didn’t cancel, because so far my experience has been a blast! I love hanging out with my group, and contributing to the group activities/assignments. My favourite trip so far was the swim to survive challenge. We had to do basic swimming lessons, and if we completed everything, we were given a certificate (I haven’t received mine yet, but that’s okay). 

On July 15th, we volunteered at a local garlic farm and helped the coordinator, Mel Jones, harvest a whole row of garlic. Personally, I thought the garlic looked very similar to onions, and even mistook it as an onion a few times! The farm donates all of their money to support OCAPDD, and it made me feel good knowing that I was volunteering to help them out. However, the experience would have been extra amazing if there wasn’t a heatwave… 

Something I’ve learned about the city so far is the humidity! I can walk out of the residence with my freshly styled hair and come back into the building with fuzzy, straight, greasy hair! 

I miss a few things from home, specially my cute little dog named Nico, and my comfy cozy bed. We have to wake up by 8:45 and walk to our trades class, but personally I’m not very upset about it. I actually feel excited to wake up each morning and experience something new!