Cameron Penney
After a week of hard work and dedication, four local youth have prepared and launched their own initiative in an effort to raise local awareness on mental health.
The “Sprout Ideas Camp,” which ran from July 25-29 at Fort Frances High School, challenged youth to consider issues within their community and construct solutions to combat the issues.
“I think what’s unique about the ‘Sprout Ideas Camp’ is how youth-lead it is,” said camp co-ordinator Lindsay DuPré of TakingITGlobal, the organization hosting the camp.
“Every step of the way the program is adapted to meet the passions, interests, and ideas that are shaped by the youth involved in the program,” she stressed.
“We have a general outline of how we structure it to help guide the youth through their idea development, but the most inspiring things that come out of it are the unique circumstances or things that come up that we never expected.”
The week began with a brainstorming sessions on issues that were important to the students.
DuPré noted the group had discussion on topics such as poverty, youth engagement, self-esteem, and the environment, before choosing mental health as the issue that the youth were most passionate about.
“Through their ideas and passions, we explored mental health and what that means and came up with this campaign called ‘Youth Supporting Youth,” DuPré explained, while adding they are aiming to change the way youth understand and talk about mental health.
“There’s huge stigma around mental health in the area, and the more that that stigma exists, the more isolated people feel and the less likely they are to seek help,” DuPré reasoned, while citing impacts such as people dropping out of school, and moving towards addictions.
During the week, the four students in the camp collaborated to create an informational video titled “#YMentalHealth” and launched their own website.
As part of the idea development process, the youth connected with a like-minded group in Arviat, NU, via video calling.
“It was really cool to see that in Arviat, the issues that they came up with in their community that they wanted to address were very similar to what the youth wanted to do here,” DuPré remarked.
“On that one video conference, we had Inuit youth, First Nations youth, Métis youth and non-indigenous youth,” she added.
“To create spaces where youth from all of those different communities are coming together and collaborating on something—we haven’t really seen that before and there’s so much potential in that.”
Typically, the camp ends with youth presenting their ideas to a panel of judges, similar to Dragon’s Den. But the youth here wanted as many communities members as possible to hear their message and invited as many as possible.
“They wanted to open it up to as many community members as possible to come and give feedback and to see if they’ll jump on their movement,” DuPré explained. “It could be a model we see happening in more and more communities to gain that support,” she reasoned.
Ian McKay was among the community members in attendance at the presentation, and noted that the passion of the youth stood out to him.
“Everyone is very involved, and have themselves invested in it,” he enthused. “It’s a really great thing to see.
“I think that everyone in the community has something that they can contribute, and I think that’s often overlooked a lot of the times,” he stressed.
“We feel we don’t have something to offer or our help isn’t necessary and I say no—anyone regardless of previous education or previous issues with mental health has something to offer, because we all deal with it sometime in our life.”
Grade 10 student Katelyn Bruyere, a participant in the camp, noted that through her participation in the camp, she was able to learn more about her own community.
“I learned a lot of different stuff, like all the different guest speakers that came in—they talked about a bunch of different opportunities,” she recalled, while citing the “Summer Work Program” as an example.
“I didn’t know that there was five different mental health clinics in town, and I felt like I wouldn’t have known that unless I had come here and looked it up,” she stressed.
“That’s what the program here is working towards—getting to know different mental health resources within the community.”
“If they need it, it’s easier to find,” she reasoned.
Travis Isaac Yerxa, another participant in the camp and recent Fort High graduate, was inspired to create change in his community after realizing that not many people from his home in Couchiching First Nation earn their high school diplomas.
“I want to do something to help convince people to get back into school,” he stressed.
“This is an opportunity to change things around the community you lived and grew up in,” he reasoned.
While enrollment in the camp was lower than expected, DuPré hopes the camp returns here in the future.
“We’re learning from some of our challenges—recruitment was a little bit of an obstacle for us but for a positive reason,” she noted.
“Many of the youth who were interested had full-time summer jobs,” she explained.
“[It’s] awesome that there are a lot of youth with summer jobs, but then it was hard for us to get a group together to do the camp.”
DuPré noted that with a larger group, there is usually several projects on the go, but a smaller group allowed for more time and focus.
“Sometimes when things don’t go as planed they end up being even better,” she stressed. “We were able to focus in on one issue with one team, and really just dig in really deep—which I think would work really well.”
For more information on the “Youth Supporting Youth” initiative, visit www.elise427.wixsite.com/youthsupportingyouth
