A leadership program based out of the high school in Arviat, Nunavut, is teaching young people lessons that fall outside the standard curriculum.
"The goals of the program are fairly large," says Ross Paterson, one of the two co-ordinators of the Arviat Leadership Resiliency Program (LRP). "Our open-ended goal down the road would be to see a community with a greater kind of self-confidence and pride, lower cases of domestic and spousal violence and decreased crime rates."
Paterson and Amanda McLaughlin, LRP's other co-ordinator, work out of John Arnalukjuak High School, where they oversee groups of youth, sorted by age, through a one-year cycle of community service, physical activity and coping strategies for everything from daily challenges to real crises.
Youth can either self-refer themselves to the program, or different agencies in the community, including the RCMP, social services or school staff, will refer them for the program.
The participants are encouraged to view LRP as a safe space where they can push themselves to deal with things that fall outside of their emotional or physical comfort zones to gain skills and confidence and develop protective factors.
With nearly half of the community's population under the age of 18, Paterson and McLaughlin are hopeful that, in the long term, those protective factors will help tackle the number of issues Arviat's youth face, ranging from suicide, unhealthy relationships and substance abuse. For now, the participants' enthusiasm is encouraging.
"We've had a few graduates actually come back and be a part of the program as it continues to run," says McLaughlin. "A few of them actually took a really big interest in that so we're trying to engage and involve them as much as we can in a peer leadership role."
They add the support from the local RCMP has been especially helpful. Paterson and McLaughlin often call in members to help run activities, do presentations or just to be a positive presence in uniform.
"We've had wonderful support from the RCMP," says Paterson. "They've been a much more visible kind of presence over those last three years and we've just been reaping the benefits of that."