 Thinking about Gani Gani Cik we have about 13 programs that we run out of the organization and so we run programs that are focused on employment and training or education and training, mentorship and health and wellness. And so we have programs that focus, one of our programs called Restoring the Sacred works with youth who are coming from their First Nation community to go to school here in the city because they don't have high schools in their communities. And we know that those youth are at risk of being exploited and recruited for gangs. And so Restoring the Sacred works with volunteer peer mentors where we connect them one on one with mentorship. And we deliver that program three days a week so that they have a safe place to go. Families are scared to send their kids here because they're going missing and getting murdered. And so this is a safe place that kids can come to. They help them academically get finished that grade level that they're here to do and connect them with a tutor if they need to. They have connections with the employment or the education counselors in the communities our staff do. And they have connections with the school counselors here for the schools that each of those students are going to. And they make connections with the host home. So sometimes those students come here and live with strangers. So it can be very scary and difficult for a kid who might be from a very small community to come to the city. So that's Restoring the Sacred. Excuse me. We also have a program called Root Connections which is a program working with justice involved girls who are coming out of this system. And we connect them with staff mentors. And those mentors work on if they want to go to school, if they want to take a training program, life skills, housing, whatever needs those young women have, our mentors work with them. And the work that we do is working with our relatives. So it isn't, you know, this nine to five, I'm done, I'm going home. We've had some of our staff whose participants were pregnant and having a baby and folding them in the middle of the night to say, I'm in labor and the and the staff get up and go to the hospital to be with them to have that baby because they have nobody else in their life. So it is about working with our relatives here are the people that we love and and doing what we can to help meet their needs. That's Root Connections. We also have a program called Kastase Amal which works with boys who are 12 and under. So they might be pre-justice involved and maybe, you know, vandalism and those kinds of things. And we have staff mentors who work with them one-on-one sort of for behavior modifications and finding them alternative resources. We've had, we've had some of our participants do horse therapy where they've gone out and made connections with a couple that runs a ranch that does that work. And they connect with whoever their circle of care is, the mentors connect with them. So whether it's the social worker, the parents, the therapist, whoever's connected with that child supports, we do that. And it's 12 and under because under 12 years old you cannot be formally legally charged. And so we want to work with our youth before it comes to that. So that one's Kastase Amal meaning our eldest brother. And then we also have a program called My Team which is the Manitoba youth education and training mentorship. And that works with kids who are exiting CFS care. So between the ages of 16 and 21 they can be in the program. And it helps prepare them for living independently because we know mostly when you come out of the CFS system you are given a warm handshake and a good luck with the rest of your life. So this program really works with you to try to prepare them for what that looks like. And statistically we know that that youth who come out of care are the ones who are seeing overrepresented in gangs in the justice system. When the, when they did the homelessness pointing count not long ago a majority, I think it was, I don't want to misquote their percentages but I think it was 75% of those they engaged that night on the street indicated that they had been at some point in their life connected to CFS. And so we know that that the youth are not prepared when they come out of CFS. We hear from lots of our youth that I don't want welfare, I don't want social assistance, I don't want anything, I just want to live on my own and I don't want anything. I want a job and I want to have my own place, that's what I want. That's what they want before they leave. The reality is those things are not, there is nothing out there for them to provide them with supports once they leave care. And typically it's 18 years old but there are youth who get extensions of services to the age of 21 that might get some additional supports before that but after that they are completely cut off from any supports that they had. So it is a sort of eye-opener for these youth to understand how alone they are and how they are left with nothing. So we do a lot of work on trying to prepare them for, excuse me, going to school or get a training program, housing as well for these youth, life skills for the youth, and again meeting their needs wherever they're at. Sometimes we've had youth who've exited our program and we still stay connected with them. I mean, you wouldn't do that to your own family. So these are our relatives, these are our kids, our family and so they'll still come here and have coffee and connect with us organizationally. Sometimes we are able to move kids from one program into another so that their supports continue. So that's the my team program. We have another program called Wakotuin, which is a Strengthening Families Program. That program works with the whole family and whoever that family is to that, to that youth. So there's a target, the target group is the youth, but the program model itself is a family model. So if you're living with grandma or you're living with your auntie or you're living with a foster parent, whoever that might be, we ask all the supports to come in. So we deliver, it's a model that we are evaluating. So we have a partnership with the University of Winnipeg and we deliver it at four different sites. So we've partnered with Spence Neighborhood Association, Ndinoa and the Balal Center and then Gani Gani Cik. And we all deliver the program at our individual sites and target our individual youth and families. And that program has a best practice model that's based out of, I believe it's Seattle that we were able to get that model from. And it works with staff mentors, so paraprofessionals in the program, rather than sort of psychologists or medical professionals. And they do home visits and it has a curriculum that they deliver. And there's a close fidelity to that curriculum. So we can do some adaptations and we've done a lot of cultural adaptations to ensure that we're embedding culture in that work. But we've seen lots of success with families in that program as well. And it provides families with tools on how to communicate, how to problem solve as families, and how to set parameters and goals for a family. So even if they take a few of those tools away, we've heard from families that they've had some, they've had success in using the tools that they've gotten from that program. So that's our Wacotun program. We also have education and training programs which I talked about. One is our business administrative assistant program. And the other one is the executive assistant. And so we are accredited through MIT for those programs. And it's a two-year program. So you can take the first year and get a certificate, which is the business administrative assistant. And then the second year, which is the executive assistant and advanced certificate. And that program has also practicum placement for six weeks that we send them out into the community. And we have probably built 150 employer relationships that we've developed over the years to give our students opportunities, to various opportunities, to do their practicum. The other education and training program we have is called Honoring Gifts, which is a pre-employment program working with single Indigenous mothers who may have never worked before or not had really sustainable employment. And it also embeds the essential, workplace essential skills and literacy learning in that program as well. And it also has practicum placements. And we've seen lots of success with our practicum placements. Lots of our participants in both programs will be offered employment after doing their practicum placement. So we've heard from our partners that our students are even more prepared for the second year than their own students when they're delivering it at their site. And they believe that it's because it's a community-based delivery, which we can then provide greater supports to our participants. And the work that we do with our students isn't just about the education and training, there is also the real-life challenges that students face, including housing, including domestic relationships, including childcare, all of that, just even mental health needs that our students might have. And so we have a employment development and life skills coach on staff who is specifically for the education and training programs that provide that additional supports to our students so that some days when they walk through the door and they want to quit, we have somebody there that can say what's happening and let's work through that. But the instructors also are a big part of providing additional supports where it's needed. And we've had students who have come here with a punch in the face, like a black eye and still came the very next day to school. So we know that there are real challenges that students are having just to be in the program. And so it's critical that we treat people with respect and understand we're working with them where they're at. We don't judge our students. Not going to get kicked out because you're having some challenges or your attendance is you're having troubles with attendance. We work through those challenges and try to figure out what's causing that and how we can remove those barriers for students. So those are our education and training programs. And then we have a second site because we are bursting at the seams here at Ghani Ghani Chikin. So we know we need to expand. And so we have a second site at the social enterprise building on Main Street and we deliver a couple of programs out of there. One of our programs that we recently actually moved back to the site because the the families wanted it is our heart medicine sorry medicine bear counseling and supports elder support services. And that program works with families of murdered and missing indigenous women and girls. And we know for a lot of our families there's lots of need for healing around around losing a family member in that way. And it's also really difficult to sort of understand why so many indigenous women and girls are going missing and being murdered. And they're unresolved and a lot of times not a priority. And so that's really difficult to work through as a human being to understand why are we seen almost as sort of disposable human beings. And so we do lots of work around healing and wellness in that program. We also have a program called Heart Medicine which works with women who've experienced sexualized violence and and do healing sessions with with those participants. We have our program called Mino Babatsuin which is working with ending HIV AIDS STPBI sort of epidemic right now in the indigenous community and we do lots of education around that in our community and we work with the community. We're one of the only indigenous organizations still doing work around HIV and AIDS. There's few that are doing that work and so it's really especially because Manitoba has the second highest rates of HIV and AIDS in Canada and so Saskatchewan being number one and we're very closely behind that and so there's lots of work that still needs to be done there. And especially because when we're thinking about First Nations community having access to testing and those kinds of things, we know what the barriers are and we need to do a lot more work around that and stigma and all of that. And then we have a program called White Wolf Speaking which works with reproductive justice for youth and and sort of sexual education and and so there's some training that goes on that they take out into the community when they do that. We've recently just received funding for another program around teen dating violence and so that one is just in its we've only been running started for for a month now just over a month so we're also going to be embedding that into into the community and we're also going to be working with First Nations communities up north to do work around that program as well. With every program every single program we run we embed Indigenous ways of being in our work. So all of our programs embed ceremony as an organization. We we do medicine picking together with our participants and we we bring in our our cultural our knowledge keep knowledge keepers or elders some people refer to them as and and embed as much Indigenous knowledge into our programming as we can. One of the things we know that our elders are telling us is that we need to bring our young people back to the fire and and we know that that if we want to change things that's really important work that we do. So when we think about because we talk sometimes about the the seven sacred teachings but there's really thousands of sacred teachings and so we try to access as many knowledge keepers and elders as we can to bring into our program so that we can get as much information on Indigenous ways of being and embedding that our staff have an opportunity to participate because we want our staff to be able to then teach and and do that work in the program and and so that's really critical in the work that we do is that we embed Indigenous ways of being in everything that we do here. I guess thinking about success we we have to think about it in in two ways. There's every program that you have you have a funder who then has reporting requirements and they almost have their own expected outcomes that they want to see happening as part of that funding stream so for example restoring the sacred the funding that we get really is about is about preventing sexual exploitation and so we need to do some measurement around success around that building knowledge and understanding around what that could look like what what what you know what that what recruiters might look like and preparing kids to understand that and so that would be a measurement of success a funder success to see that or in the education programs that their measurement tools sometimes doesn't doesn't really match the reality for students but their measurement tool is about around attendance and I understand a lot of it is because of funding if they're not there we we don't want to give the funding but but but grades can do really they can do really well with grades but that's not a measurement tool for funders in some way so sometimes it doesn't really match what what you would see as success we've had a once we had a woman come right from the streets doing you know sex work on the streets and and there's lots of you know discussion around language and safer ways to use language around women who've been exploited and and traffic to do sex work but we've had a woman leave the street and come right into the program and say I want to get my kids back so she took the honoring gifts program that would be a measurement of success but the funder measures success differently so we we we as an organization try to measure success based on the participants goals and what their what their needs are if we get housing for people if we have them enter a training program if somebody like we've had women who have come into the program who were on methadone and needed to leave the program to go have their methadone treatment and come back to the program and we've had some of our other participants tell us that that that was triggering for them and so we've we worked with the those students to move their treatment to the end of the day and they had no idea that they were even triggering some of the other students so that was a success in just how we can keep people in a program and make sure that everybody feels safe and is well and just finding ways to do things differently measuring success is really about the individuals goals and what that success looks like but of course then we still have to meet funder measurements of success as well I think thinking about Gany Ganychik and what would like Indigenous education in our organization is about it really is about having a culturally safe place for people to to have a learning experience and I know there's been a lot of discussion about what is cultural safety and and we've some mori nurses came up with the definition of what cultural safety is and so we've adapted that and adopted it and use it as our organization but also cultural safety is having a place where where people Indigenous people can come and learn about Indigenous ways of being learn about culture gain knowledge explore that if if that's what what what they wish because we have individuals Indigenous individuals who aren't interested and aren't there yet in in learning culture and understanding culture and part of that is just in community there's a lot of sort of Christianity Christianity embedded in community and so that's been the practice for communities but we want to give people a place that they can explore that and understand that in a safe way where it's where the learning is from knowledge keepers those who who can give us that knowledge and share that information with us a place where you can come and use medicines if you like we've had people who've worked here and then moved on to other employment and on their lunch breaks come here and do as much and go back to work because this is a place where they can do that so that's cultural safety that's a place where you can walk in and have people that look like you and understand who've you know we've had we try to hire people with lived experience so there's people who've experienced what you've experienced and and understand what that what that means and so and have a place where you're not judged and and and so that's really important in I think Indigenous education and really understanding that we hear from our students that it can be intimidating to go to a an institution that's huge and intimidating and scary there's not a lot of students that look like you there might be a student nobody speaks your language if that's if you come from a community where you have your language and so having a smaller connection to a community-based delivery has been one of the things that we've heard from students that's the reason that's one of the main reasons why I chose to go to Ghani Ghani Chik instead of to the institution that also offers the same program I think overall Indigenous education should embed embed Indigenous ways and knowledge in in their delivery there's so much value in in embedding land-based learning and and you know learning about medicines and learning about learning Indigenous ways while you're still working through Western curriculum there's real value in doing that there's a you if you can make the connection between what you're learning and what's Indigenous ways there's sort of a more natural desire to to to learn and I guess that could be really thinking about people's learning styles and different ways of of of incorporating learning in your teaching methodologies that focus on on on individuals on the individual learner I would love to see that youth wouldn't have to leave their communities to to go to school you know it's a human right to education and families are scared to send their children out of their community so we're hearing now that families are either picking up and moving so their youth can their children can go to high school or they don't go at all so if we're thinking about education in 10 years from now and we're not you know trying to resolve some of those some of those barriers then we're because I see Indigenous education as more Indigenous teachers Indigenous led institutions more Indigenous students in education and more traditional practices embedded in in in education that's that's what how I see Indigenous education but if we're not focusing on the on the barriers that we know exist now we're not going to get there we won't get there when I think about Indigenous education I think like when if you go to a I went to a conference a homelessness conference and we know that probably I think it's 80% of of people who are homeless are Indigenous so it's high and when we think about those of us who are doing work in the in homelessness there's there's probably 30% of Indigenous people doing work in that in that area so we want so we know that there's sort of a gap in in Indigenous trained trained Indigenous people coming out of the education systems whether it's post-secondary or formal education then more than we've seen before but not not enough to have us working with our people so I see more Indigenous people who are coming out of the education system trained and prepared to work with our people I think that's what I see for Indigenous education more Indigenous people being trained and employed there are a number of Indigenous organizations that exist right now but but not enough and we want to be able to do more for our community and not because our community is unhealthy or community is we are Indigenous community is a thriving beautiful community and all we're doing is providing some supports and resources for the pieces that they need in that moment and and so we want to be able to offer more programming and more services but when you're a small organization and I would say Gani Gani Chick is a smaller organization I mean we have probably about 45 employees here there is you want to you want to grow and expand and so a lot of times you think about there was a time where we didn't have say a human resource person and we had to try to figure out what are our needs around human resources and policy development and those kind of things so then you we were able to secure some funding to hire our human resource person and do some work around that but what about organizations that don't have access to those funding or they apply for the funding and they're not successful one of the things that I was thinking about a while ago and I know that um gosh I forgot the name spark I think will pair you up with professionals in in the community if you have a need so if there was an HR professional that and you didn't have an HR they'd pair you up um and which is wonderful but that's sort of short term supports you're getting and so there needs to be sort of a resource maybe that um Indigenous organizations can access for building capacity and um strengthening capacity because lots of organizations have the capacity they just don't have the people the people resources to to um or the or the all the knowledge so we might have the people but we might not have somebody who has all the knowledge in HR or somebody who has like we're growing as an organization right now and we have to think do we have enough operations structurally operations people so finance people administrative people leadership people are there enough of those and do we have the right people how do you sort of assess where you are as an organization and do some strategic planning around that if if you don't have the people on staff who have experience or skills in doing those kinds of things so I think if there was a resource you could uh organization you could call or a resource that you can engage in in doing some growth and building for Indigenous organizations I think that would be really helpful so just finding those gaps that you might have as an organization and being able to find a resource that'll help you feel those gaps um uh I can't think of anything else right now in terms of I mean there's so there's a lot of need and it always comes back to the funding and I think that you know that has to be said because Indigenous organizations are are are fund underfunded um and so it does come back to if you had the funding you could put the resources in or you could hire the consultants or you could do those kinds of things the other piece that I want to mention is that we um we call our relatives who who come here and and participate in our programs we call them participants or relatives we don't clientize our our family members that come here and so that's really important to us as well and organizationally we try not to um we try not to use hierarchies in our work and it's hard because you know you're you're an Indigenous organization that's required to use what these westernized approaches you know you have to have policies and procedure manuals you have to have a finance policy your funder wants to see an org chart those are all western um ways that you have to embed in Indigenous you have to be incorporated you have to have a business number that those are all really critical pieces but organizationally we try we try and it's it's difficult we try to decolonize in how we do our work like even when we have um staff difficulties we try to embed sharing circles or having a sweat lodge ceremony or something that'll help us come together as as staff but it's hard because you're bringing people who come from you know westernized workplaces and you're trying to do something new and and and it's it's sometimes difficult because it you'll you'll be able to use pieces of it and then somebody will say I want to I want to initiate this HR process so people still have the safety of sort of that legal employment piece to back back up back them you know to lean back on but um you do you try to do a lot of work in the beginning to sort of decolonize that in our work so as an organization we we we are committed to doing that um not always successfully we're trying to like marry two ways of doing something and and how make sure people feel safe in doing that and doing it in a good way but as an Indigenous organization it's intentional we are intentionally thinking about that all the time especially those who are sort of in the leadership positions we do that work together all the time to say what's the best way of resolving this or moving forward on this or doing that um you know we offer our staff tobacco to have a conversation about some difficulties two people might be having together and we use you know we we fan our staff and we do things that we try to embed Indigenous ways in even in our in our practices so we try not to have hierarchies where you know the boss said or those kinds of things um we all bring strength to to the organization so that's something else that as an Indigenous organization we're really intentionally trying to do that work