Rotarian Sharon McConnell introduced today's speaker, our own Randy Coker, a 10 year member of the Rotary Club of Belleville and his lovely wife Joanne, a long time member of the Picton Rotary Club and recently voted Rotarian of the Year. Both Randy and Joanne have a history of helping to support youth in the community through Rudy's choir, RLK, billeting young people, being foster parents. An opportunity came up to assist northern communities in an education project geared towards financial matters and with Randy being recently retired, they agreed to take on the project.
The area they travelled to was remote and 3 hours north of North Bay, a community with many problems of despair and hopelessness and a number of suicides. The First Nations Natural Resources have been running programs in the northern communities since 2000, providing hands on education, summer employment, food and nutrition programs, fire training, developing lifetime friendships and a sense of confidence for the people who live there. Outland Camps has been successfully delivering this award winning program, focusing on Natural Resource Management sector (mining, forestry, water quality) as a vehicle to create career awareness and to inspire youth to build personal educational plans to achieve career goals. It is crucial for youth in these communities to understand that their responsibility is to be the stewards of the land. The program is run over a 6 week period. During this time, youth will earn employability certificates such as brush saw, chainsaw, first aid, WHMIS, SP 102 Industry Forest Fire Righting and ORCA level 1 and 2 canoe training as well as mining matters programming and a science camp at Confederation College. Various work projects are scheduled involving skills learned. Tree planting in forest license areas is a favourite. Life skills learned over the 6 weeks are instrumental in building competency and confidence in the youth empowering them to design their educational career plans. Since 2000 over 300 youth representing 44 northern Ontario communities have participated in the program.
Randy got involved in the program through a friend from university, a roommate who was involved in the program. They were looking for someone with financial knowledge to teach the youth how to handle money and to develop a curriculum. In consultation with Sam Brady and John Smale, Randy realized that the Junior Achievement program was an excellent fit and he connected with an associate Rotarian and with the support of his wife Joanne, they followed the outline and created a one day lesson plan that was interactive and would help the students in their goal setting. Students were encouraged to identify their strengths and interests and to talk about career possibilities. Joanne and Randy taught them how to budget and how to prepare for an interview.
Currently the program is funded provincially, but the goal is to expand the program and attract a wide range of businesses, natural resource companies. The local Band has to support the student they enroll in the program to the tune of $2,000. Randy was thanked by Birgit Wartenberg, who as the Chair of the Indigenous Peoples Partnership, knows the importance of supporting the northern communities and showing how much we care. The Rotary Club of Belleville has given out bursaries this year to indigenous youth to support them in their education.