 and other various agencies. So I try to meet with each individual one to one before they come out to a program. So everybody's needs are different. I work with offenders, so sometimes those individuals are violent offenders. I've worked with people who have not just domestic violence, but also murders. I work with women who are also victims of violence. I work with children who are victims of violence, sexual violence, it varies from each individual. So I kind of try to get an idea of where that person's at and what their needs are. So sometimes their needs aren't necessarily programming or education or program-based, but sometimes just friendly conversation, just to kind of see where their wellness is at and we do run programming as well. So each week we have a different topic that we cover within our programming. So for instance, right now we are running a 12-week violence reduction program. And some of that, it's very basic, like mindfulness, meditation, how to take yourself out of a situation and bringing yourself to a place of calm. This is a small life skill tool that sometimes we don't think about or we don't have that skill. We also talk about what our own individual roles are in the community and what we're doing for each other to reduce violence in small ways, I guess, right down to pay it forward, small ways to make somebody else smile or if somebody needs advocacy and support, are they reaching out? So I guess we're trying to just build up a group of people who are willing to go the distance and help others as well, not just in class learning. So up-and-coming programs that we are going to be doing are kind of bringing back to self-identity and learning about who we are as indigenous people. We have, I believe, in the next couple weeks, we're gonna be doing some teachings on the creation story, Nishinaabe creation story, and then also following that, we are going to do the Haudenosaunee creation story as well. We feel that it's important for people to understand and to be grounded in where they came from. We service a lot of people who don't have identity, so we try to touch on individual people's identities. So hence why we're doing Nishinaabe and Haudenosaunee, hopefully that we can pull in some other people to teach about other backgrounds as well. We do have Kree people as well as Mikmal that are attending programs right now and some people who don't know where they're from. So we just kind of give them a blanket idea of what different cultures entail. Going back to the violence reduction program, which we have, it's a holistic wellness program. We will be discussing in the future some about intimate partner violence and just bringing some awareness to that, what it is and who's affected. Also our traditional gender roles, how things were in the past, how things are now and how things have changed and how that affects the community in reference to violence. We did touch on the creation stories. In addition, we will be doing a medicine walk in the spring and we have offered some traditional crafting, which also we do discuss violence in those and touch on missing and murdered indigenous women and where that's at, how that happens, talking about vulnerabilities and just bringing some awareness to our group with that. When I do work with people individually, it looks different for each person. Some people, like I said, it's just talking and to giving them some ideas of ways of life and how to make some changes. Sometimes it seems like it's parenting because you're holding somebody's hand and they're trusting you in a sense that you're guiding them towards some good things with addictions and with mental health. Niagara is in a state of despair right now. So to be able to take somebody and to, I guess, put some faith in them and to show them that there is hope and just finding resources is very difficult. We're struggling here in Niagara and in finding housing and services that, I mean, some things are just so far beyond our scope. Okay, so going back, we were talking about housing and mental health and again, that Niagara is in a state of despair around housing. An example is the hotel system. We have various hotels in Niagara that are housing people for low income. Unfortunately, these houses or these hotels are not appropriate for families with children and then we're facing people with lack of skills. Lack of skills in renting or bad credit, limited housing options or subsidized housing options. It's leaving families struggling even just to get into a shelter. So a lot of times we don't get around to the programming pieces because there's a constant state of crisis. Family and children services. And then the children are taken when there's inadequate. When parents aren't able to take care of their children but that also leaves the families without a lack of funds because their child tax, which is their main source to secure housing is taken from them. It leads to other issues that they have to face. And unfortunately, it seems to be chronic and it's really difficult. We do have programming here and we have seen some success within our Homeward Bound Program in housing single women. I believe it's between five and 10 families that we are currently servicing through Homeward Bound which I work very closely with because I do some life skill programming with that program, with some of the individuals involved there. So now they have a subsidy for their housing, they have appropriate housing, very homes that they probably wouldn't have been able to secure without the program. A handful of them are in college at this point. So doing some post-secondary. Others are doing academic upgrading and are expected to be in programs by next year. In addition to that, they are doing other programming around learning how to job skills, things like that, some cultural teaching and other programming such as that. Unfortunately, that funding is not enough to service our entire community and the restrictions on that funding are so strong that we're not able to service men in the same manner. We do need funding for individuals, men that are raising their children as well. We see a lot of that happening in this community. One of the questions is like, maybe how do you measure success of your program? Measuring success, I guess, some like to measure success in numbers. I guess that's true. I mean, how many people that you service and how many people are returning does measure success in some way. I think that success for me is being able to see somebody smile. That's success for me. I feel that, you know, if somebody's getting something out of the program, that's success. So for instance, in one of my programs, you know, I had an individual that felt comfortable enough to let me know that after a program, I guess talking about violence that she was able to discuss with me an incident that she had had this past week and how the program, some of the things that she had learned in the program were helping her to cope and to work through those issues that they were having in their home. So for me, that success, when those tools are being put to work and also that somebody trusts me enough that they're able to talk to me about what's happening in their lives. Another, I guess, indicator of success is when somebody goes for a treatment program that we've kind of helped to facilitate and they are successful and that they want to actually continue within a treatment program. So in some cases, some land-based programs that we've sent individuals to, they've carried on to do the aftercare and they have a plan in place where they would like to continue to grow and to stay sober. And it's amazing just to see that. That is, you know that these programs are successful. In evaluating each of the programs, we don't do a formal evaluation. However, we do look for verbal feedback from participants, what worked for them, what isn't working for them, right down to the meals. So I have a picky group of people and that food brings participants. So we do evaluate what did they like? What did they want to see? Where did they want to go? And one of the things that was recommended was to do a retreat of some sort and that's something that we're gonna work on and doing some, getting out in the land and doing some things that are different from what we have here within this urban community. Some of the challenges that we face, however, are our funding as well as our location. We are in a rural area that's in an urban community. So we don't have bus routes. We don't have the ability to always taxi people in. We have limited van usage because of the amount of programming that we have going on here. I have moved my programs to Saturday to alleviate that, that I can ensure that people are getting programs as well as I've moved to the downtown core of the main city that we service. From your perspective, what is Indigenous education? I think Indigenous education, one, it's getting right down to the roots and finding who you are. We have so many people who are displaced. They do not know who they are. And I have to be honest, like that was also myself coming into the community at the age of 21. The not knowing who I was and only, my only focus was on the abuse that we had suffered as children. And that was how I identified being Indigenous was, I guess, focused on abuse. I learned in my 20s that my own father had attended the mush hole and that he had spent a good portion of his life there. And it gave me insight as to why we had to suffer that kind of violence as young people. So for me, I think Indigenous education is finding those healthy people, the elders, the knowledge holders, the people in the community that are able to teach us about living in a good way and living a good life and sharing stories, sharing language. I think that outside of this community, those things seem so small that they're, I think that's the foundation. Those are the big things that we need to pass on and to share. And that's why I try to bring that into my programming and not just focusing on violence but focusing on moving forward and how are we gonna live in a good way? What is your vision for Indigenous education over the next 10 years? Indigenous education. So as a parent, I see it in so many different ways. I have three children and all of my children have different ideas of what their education is going to look like and being Indigenous children. From my son who, his education is going to be more hands-on and for my daughter, I envision that she's going to wanna learn a lot more about her background. She's decided that she would like to be a midwife but she'd like to do that in the Indigenous community. So I foresee that more children and youth are going to be, I guess, adults as well are going to be going into a more formal education rather than stopping where we're at. I think that programs are pushing people to see a bigger, I guess, a bigger vision for themselves, right? Where they can go to post-secondary school. That's, for some people, they didn't think that was an option. And I know, like I said, my oldest son, yes, hands-on, but he's told me that he's been told he's not going to post-secondary but I've assured him that he most certainly will be. And my youngest son, it's, I mean, he's four years old but I see great things for him as well and that he will move forward and become educated. So I guess to summarize what I'm trying to say is that I do see more Indigenous people going into formal education in the next 10 years and there's going to be a lot more professional Indigenous people so within our court system and within all of these systems, I think that we're gonna see a huge rise in Indigenous people.