Indigenous Projects

For the past 6 years The Rotary Club of Collingwood South Georgian Bay has focused part of its fundraising support on Indigenous projects or what we refer to as our 'National Projects'. We wanted to be part of the solution to the national Indigenous education crisis and an important first step was to ensure that our support came from requests from the communities themselves. We started with a 4 year project of education support in Attawapiskat First Nation in partnership with the children's education charity Elephant Thoughts Educational Outreach. This grew into support of a number of different James Bay Cree communities but we also wanted to share our support with indigenous youth closer to home so for the past two years our Rotary Club, Elephant Thoughts, and Big Brothers Big Sisters of The Georgian Triangle collaborated to deliver a successful mentoring program for First Nations, Metis and Inuit youth within Simcoe County. The program was focused on youth age 13-17 who have natural talents waiting to be discovered or nurtured and would benefit from additional academic and social support. Rotarians were asked to be mentors and President Lisa Farano worked with an artistic Cree mother of two to help her to build confidence and bring her beading and painting talents to the local market. The mentoring will continue but this year Rotary SGB will be focusing their support on an online Traditional Knowledge Mapping and in-school education support program in remote communities. Again we will work with Elephant Thoughts on this program that will involve data collecting through interviewing elders and training locals through internships to do this work, deliver education programs and build capacity in the communities. It's a comprehensive program and based on our years of experience working with and supporting indigenous education, one we really believe in.