 My name is Goldie Simon. I'm the mother of Carl Simon and I'm from Napa's Valley First Nation in Cambridge, Nova Scotia, a Napa's Valley First Nation school and it's on the Napa's Valley First Nation reserve. This school's from grade primary to grade 12 and also offers an adult program as well. They teach all different ages of students that wouldn't necessarily go to like a regular school. This school is, it helped my son with, he had like an anxiety and depression and like they said, a learning disability of like a memory loss. It just come on him like when he was 15 and so then he didn't go to school. He had to get, I had to keep getting them medical notes because of what happened. He wouldn't get out of bed or anything like that. So then the next year I think when he was 16, he went to school, to regular school a little bit but then wasn't able to. So then I didn't really know what to do as a parent. So then I talked to Diana McLean. She was one of the teachers here and I said well if there's any way you could help help me to get my son and at least his grade 12 in education and I said it's not, I tried the regular school but they didn't seem to have options available for him. Just doctors notes and a whole bunch of homework and stuff like that. But this school, he was able to take homework back and then he didn't feel as I guess labeled I guess. I'm not sure like and it's like with his own like people like Indian people. So he feels better like other students and they also have like I don't want to say learning disabilities but like even health problems which a regular school doesn't seem to like fit his needs that this year's school did and it made him blossom like as a person. I'm hoping that my son will graduate and get his grade 12 and move on like forward to get maybe more education and like beat his disabilities. He may still have it the rest of his life but at least he'll be able to learn how to cope and to like speak in society. To be successful and not to give up if they're if he's struggling not to give up and they keep encouraging the students to keep going don't matter what type of struggle they have. They give him opportunity like to apply for different things that he's interested in. The carriers of youth or voices he had opportunity to apply for that to talk about like education and his struggles and to present in Ottawa the past week. He had that opportunity before I'd never ever thought that he would even be able to do that like a few years ago but now with through this education program he's able to even talk in front of people and do that. There's one student she also had anxiety and now she's far as I know going to be working at the daycare and continuing her studies online while she's working and she had already graduated from grade 12 far as I know in December and it really helped her also. A very big difference in the students and also they help adults as well and Debbie is also successful going to university for three or four years quite a wall I think so she's really successful as well so it's a great opportunity to have this school it's really beneficial on the reserve. I was really I was almost given up myself on my on myself as well as Kyle but I try not to give up and it was so hard dealing with the anxiety and depression even though he may be like he's on medication just to have the extra support right in the community and with the teachers involved where they have like learning disability backgrounds and they're able to teach children so that way as a parent my job involves like traveling as well at times so it makes me feel that my son safe in the community he has a safe place to go to like when I used to go away and I said well go up to the learning center when he was younger and I said you'll be safe there safe space so that would make me feel better as a parent knowing that he's safe if I'm gone away they can get their learning you can learn here and it's like a safe place and they become successful with encouragement from the teachers and as well they're within their community and they can have like like their culture and traditionals or if there's an elder they need to talk to they'll be able to talk to an elder and then I think the teachers will encourage that as well before a few years ago he wasn't really interested in the culture well I seemed like he wasn't but now it seems like as he's amongst other students and the teachers he's more aware of it and he seems to be participating more like into making crafts and learning about history and the language he really enjoyed that if we can get the word out yeah this is an excellent program I don't know what I would have done for my son I tried a homeschool but then it was getting hurt you can't sometimes you can't like make a living and homeschool do everything yeah I would support it very well rather parents with them children with not into not going to the right like I guess how would you put it but not private school would be so this school for like all native children that's having like struggling and probably problems in like a normal school a regular school even though they think they should be like amongst other people I think this here would make them able to go amongst like other individual people more than putting them in the regular school my son probably wouldn't have been successful right now it seems seems to be going good but probably more funding maybe for like maybe more teachers eventually or more more space eventually so it could get bigger I really support this school because it really helped my son and it's helping a lot of the other students up here that probably wouldn't be able to go to the regular school it's education for Aboriginal people first all different kinds of if Inuit Mi'kma all different nations first nations I would support it because it's really helping it helped me as a parent and it helped my son and a lot of students right from young students right to grade 12 and adults there's been official to all to everybody