I Need a Hero: December 19, 2008

Well hello there all, did you miss me? I have been a little busy, saving the world. But seriously I have been enjoying some down time, working on me. Over the years I have been very busy sitting on committees, going to meetings and working hard to try and make this place a little better and from where I sit I got to say not much has changed. What I continuously find is that it’s a thankless job, no matter how hard you work to try and do some good there is always someone out there thinking you have an ulterior motive. I guess that’s just human nature isn’t it. So anyway I’m back!
I am looking forward to the Christmas break and spending some time with my girls and doing some fun stuff with them. I will get a chance to take a breath and just be me, how does the song go? “I’ve got to be me”  anyway enough about me. Grace and Hannah are quite active in figure skating, it is very nice to see them out there socializing, learning and doing something they enjoy.
Friendship House has been very busy over the past few weeks as you know we had an open house last week and it went very well. Plenty of people showed up and paid their respects and had a tour of the place. It was very successful as our staff shared information about the programs offered and freely gave of their time to show people around. Thank you for everyone who dropped by “Da House” and thanks to the staff and board members who helped out.
As this is the season of giving may I suggest a few places that often get over looked when it comes receiving donations. You all know about the usual suspects and they do good work but if I were to donate somewhere I would bring it to the good ladies at the Mission of the Good Shepherd. They run a soup kitchen among other things out of there hall, down on third avenue just across from General Paint. The other group is the Kaien Island Poverty Society otherwise known as K.A.P.S. they work with children and families who live in McKay Street neighbourhood. They are both very good groups and very solid. As you know I like to compare things to the NHL, so if they were NHL teams they would be like the Calgary Flames and Nashville Predators both gritty teams who show up with the lunch box ready to work. Check them out and make a donation go ahead I dare you to think outside the box.
And speaking about thinking outside the box, I think this is more into left field, the good ole boys from School District 52 just can’t seem to get it right. They were in the news again not getting much support about setting up their Alternate School in Cowbay.
Just to remind you Friendship House was in partnership for over ten years with the School District 52 offering the Kaien Island Alternate School out of our building which is located “downtown” then they cut us. We weren’t perfect in delivering the program but we always had graduates and we always had people coming back to school because it was in our “downtown” location.
With their new initiative they have a $100,000.00 to play with, I wish they would have consulted with us first we could have done so much more and reached so many more youth with that influx of funds. What also is getting lost in all this is that we contributed roughly $100,000.00 annually to this partnership, no one seems bothered by that or seems to care. But I do miss seeing all those smiling faces of the students walking thru our halls and taking ownership of the program feeling like they belonged. Yeah it’s too bad that the Old Boys Club at School District decided to end our relationship without really having a plan in place and being okay with that, while our most disadvantaged youth fell thru the cracks. More surprisingly was the fact that the School Board approved ending this relationship without a plan in place.
So this new Alternate School will be delayed again and one has to wonder how much this is all costing. We appreciated the letter from Brenda L. Leighton in the Daily News letter to the Editor on December 11, 2008 asking for answers. It’s too bad they did not do any consultation beforehand not after the fact unfortunately this administrative move hurts the kids and how can you measure the loss of another youth.
But in the meantime we at “Da House” have been working in partnership with the NWCC in offering an Adult Grad Program in our “downtown” location we are just finishing up our first term together and looking forward to the January 5, 2009 when the next term starts up. So if you know anyone who wants to get their grade twelve, they can do it with us and NWCC. And as my new hero Obama would say, “Can we do it…Yes we can”. Registration forms are available at the NWCC or “downtown” @ the Friendship House come and check us out we’re the best “Alternative” 
Hey if you have any comments about this article you can email me at ineedahero.pr@gmail.com or phone me you know where I am. Have a safe Christmas, pay it forward, keep it real and watch out for karma. Merry Christmas!
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Gandhi

I NEED A HERO: November 14, 2008

Well just one more day and we will find out who will be working on City Council for the next three years. I’m finding this year’s slate of candidates for Council very interesting. But the question looming out there for me is what it’s going to take to get more of our urban Aboriginal people to run for public office, let alone vote.
Now you all know this part; the last I heard our community population was around 12,000 people now for arguments sake I’ll say our aboriginal population is forty percent. Quick math then says that forty percent is 4800. Now that’s a conservative number now how many of that 4800 is of voting age? It is our hope that we can get at least fifty percent of the aboriginal population out to vote we can make a difference. When you go to vote tomorrow make sure to bring your identification and bring a friend, it’ll take you at the most ten minutes out of your day.
One rationale explained to me was that our peoples lack of trust in the system. I have heard that one too but the other side of that is how long do you as an urban aboriginal person want to be on the outside looking in. Others would say racism and others would say apathy limit our participation to get involved with the elections that happen. For many of us it’s time to stop with the excuses and lets stand up and be counted. I guess this is where some of us come in and we start to educate our people and show them that the only walls that we put up that prevent us from running for public office and voting is the walls we as individuals put up. And if you want to be taken seriously and getting tired of being ignored then do something about it. The first step in that journey could be with you going out on Saturday and exercising your right to vote. Let the community know that you want to be a part of this society our home our native land. (I couldn’t resist)
During the last Federal Election I do appreciate the City having a silent auction in the hallways of the Jim Ciccone Civic Center it gave many of us a chance to look for a bargain but also encourages some interaction and socialize. I brought my daughters and they had a bunch of questions about the election, they certainly felt comfortable being a part of the process. Just to remind you that the Prince Rupert Community Arts Council Annual Craft Fair—Nov 15 in the Russell Gamble Gymnasium
On another note, you need to check out this; Joseph Boyden of Metis heritage was recently named winner of the Giller Prize Canada’s fiction for his latest novel, Through Black Spruce, about a Cree woman’s search for her missing sister, as well as an account of how drugs and violence plague life on a Northern Ontario reserve.”
As reported the City still has not put up sign to encourage young women not to hitchhike similar to what they have in Terrace. Isn’t that amazing, we’ll see how much longer it takes, I’m not sure what the problem is but I think we should all be putting a call into City Hall and asking them what the delay is? If it’s a matter of money let’s find out how much it costs to put it up ourselves and let’s do it. Can we do it… yes we can.
Peace and don’t forget to vote.

I Need a Hero – October 31, 2008

As some of you know we, the Friendship House of Prince Rupert are celebrating fifty years of offering our services to our community. I have been there for twenty years, that’s a long time. It is our hope to have a celebration very soon along with that an open house involving all three of our locations.
We are now offering our Aama Goot Aboriginal Women’s Wellness Program; we have brought in a talented young lady with a great attitude and a solid work ethic, Alison Smith. She will be offering a number of programs and services with the medicine wheel in mind as well setting up a resource center. One of our long standing activities within this program is the “Power Puff Girls” this will be starting this Monday. This is a girls group for those between the ages of 8-13 years. This program will run every Monday from 3:15 to 5pm, this is a drop in program but it would be nice if you could phone and RSVP it’ll give us a nice idea as to how many children to expect. Alison will also be offering a “Women’s Activities Group” where they will do a variety of programs and activities, if there is enough interest I would like to bring back the native art and carving program. If you have any program ideas that Alison can work on give her a call.
We recently brought in a fine young Canadian kid to implement our “Men’s Aboriginal Family Support Worker Program”. This program will be offering support to men with a focus on education, prevention and healthy socialization activities. Lyle Angus will be working full time out the “Da House” and will be offering some programs in the near future. If you have any questions or have any ideas you would like to see in this program give Lyle a call.
With both of these programs the staff will generally be working a Monday to Friday 9-5 shift but once we get an idea of what times are best for the participants I anticipate those hours changing to include some evening and weekend work. Our phone number at Da House is 250-627-1717 Lyle can be reached at ext. 63 and Alison can be reached at ext. 24
Another bright light at “Da House” is the success we are experiencing in offering our “Family Advocate/Community Resource Worker”. As some of you know we have Ulf Kristansen working with us in this position. Ulf basically will help you with application forms, do a little bit advocacy and point you in the right direction. He will not be holding your hand or doing your resume for you, we have services in town that can do that. One night a week Ulf will also be at our Youth Center where he will chat it up with the youth and see how he can help the 30 to 40 youth who go there each night.
Our Aboriginal Family Literacy Program is off to a flying start, our Coordinator is Andrea Weinmeyer and is the final stages of setting up our Literacy Room. The Literacy room will be open to everyone as we encourage families to come on down and see some of our wonderful resources. We will be offering tradtional story telling one night a week and beleive this is going to be awesome.
It’s not rocket science on how we set up and offer our programs basically for each program we offer at the Friendship House, it involves three components. An activity; this brings in the participants gets there interest; the activity could vary from making fry bread or making a dream catcher. Then there are the healthy snacks, food mmmm. We leave the food out and the participants can help themselves. Then lastly somewhere in our time together we have a lesson or a guest speaker, this can focus on anything, after a few sessions we are able to find out what the people want to learn or talk about. Then we go about and bring in relevent guest speakers. The other focus of course is the medicine wheel. I’ll let you think about that.
Friendship House has an open door policy many of these programs are available to you. If you have any questions or any ideas you want to add give me a call at Da House (I’m here all week ladies and gentleman) or email me at ineedahero.pr@gmail.com Peace and have an awesome week.