 I am an Indigenous education navigator in the L.A.V. program at Vancouver Island University and we are sponsored through the MasterCard Foundation. Through our scholarship program, we do have an age limit of 35, but there are different requirements in each of our five different program elements. So through the scholarship program, our main element is our bachelor-funded students. So as long as there is a community match and they're under 35, that's for that program. Our college transfer is students transferring in from a college that have two years or less. We also have our youth in care scholarship, so as long as they have been in cumulative care for 12 months or longer. Our role remote just coming from a nation outside of our local partnerships and our trades is a 10 month program or longer and that is limited to 50 students or less. So for all of our program elements there is an essence of matching and what that means is we'll establish a partnership and that's usually with a nation and so we know that most nations have a wait list started and they already have students coming to our university and in that case for the one student that they are sponsoring with books, tuition and living allowance, we create a list and for their one student we will then sponsor another student for that bachelor program for books, tuition and living allowance. Our overall goal is to enroll an additional 250 students but also we are focusing on transition to employment so working with students and assisting them to find and maintain their job and also focusing on transition points in education. So we're looking at kindergarten to all the way to post-secondary so grade four, seven and 12 the transition. Well from the perspective of a navigator we work primarily with our students supporting them in whatever way that the students need us to support them but we also are focusing on enhancing the relationships that we already have in communities so we work with education coordinators, we communicate with other organizations in our communities and we communicate with chiefs and councils. Success is really a subjective word so it's really important to define it. We don't see like at those hard quantitative numbers as you must have 250 of those students graduate for this program to be successful. Success is really unique to each student so sometimes it might be that they came and enrolled and they found out that another program is better for them so I have an example of I had two students come into the bachelor program it wasn't really a program that was for them but they enrolled in a healthcare assistant and they're just graduating this December so I still see that as a success though it's not a graduation in the L.A.V. program so I think coming here and enrolling the 250 is our success. So enrolling 250 students in those respective categories that I mentioned earlier so the bulk of our target of 250 is in the bachelor students and the rural remote and college transfer and youth from care and the lower enrollment is in the trades. We have working groups that we're able to receive feedback from our community members and some of our navigators have monthly meetings with our nations to also gain feedback to to understand how we're doing and what we could do better and we're also constantly meeting with our students and open to hearing feedback all the time from them as well. From the standpoint of our nations yes because they most of them do carry a large wait list and through this program we have been able to alleviate the majority of the wait list issues through that matching mechanism. I think the initial challenge for for myself has been working with some communities that I'm not from so it's establishing that relationship with the student so it does take time and some some persistence you know it's kind of like a stranger coming in and so I'm always kind of letting them know that I'm there and some students they just don't need this support as much as others so it's just that groundwork it takes time. From a broad sense I think Indigenous education is is a journey that we create for ourselves so our own definition whatever it means to me as an Indigenous person I would like to be able to create it and not have anybody else tell me what in digit or what education should look like for me. I think it is incredibly important for a lot of our students who are coming from communities and some of them have never been to post-secondary they might be the first in their family to go to post-secondary so this place can be pretty intimidating for some and to start to establish the type of relationship where they can open up and share you know some of the struggles they may be having at the university so we're really able to tackle any barrier head on with them and advocate for them as much as possible. I think it really speaks to our ability to try to remove any barriers the student is experiencing. I am and have been working with a student right now who's been really struggling with her ability to come while she has some large issues with Fortis BC so through a lot of investigation with her we have come to find out that another company has locked her into another contract that is charging her eight times the normal rate of hydro so I've been able to advocate with her with Fortis with access gas give her a voice with our chief and council and we're we've made a lot of progress we've had her bill reduced significantly and working with her to get out of that contract so she can just just focus on school and not having this major major bill weighing down on her and wondering how she's going to eat this month. I really see us continuing to blur the lines of these transition points so grade four seven ten twelve and having more students transition into post-secondary and pursuing whatever program that they feel passionate about and I would really love to see our people become involved in self-determination and moving towards self-governance. I really think we we have created a strong foundation in our scholarship program and I see us continuing to expand into the transition to employment to really support our students as they are coming up to graduation and moving on and us expanding into the Q to 16 really focusing on those transition points.