Family Violence Initiative

COMPENDIUM OF PROMISING PRACTICES TO REDUCE VIOLENCE AND INCREASE SAFETY OF ABORIGINAL WOMEN IN CANADA

INTERACTIONS WITHIN COMMUNITIES

Healthy Relationships: Children and Youth

Program Name:

Spirit Movers and Fire Keepers Youth Program

Organization/Community:

Minwaashin Lodge

Location:

Ottawa, Ontario

Website:

www.minlodge.com

Goals and Objectives:

To provide youth with awareness, knowledge, information and teachings about Aboriginal culture, and to promote and initiate the development of healthy friendships and relationships with other youth, free from violence and abuse.

Target Group Description:

Youth.

Program Description:

The program supports and provides at-risk Aboriginal youth with access to their culture, through sacred teachings and by promoting holistic healing. In doing so, they are able to promote links between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal organizations and services in the context of a community framework of healing. The program also encourages and facilitates the healing of relationships between youth and their biological and extended families. A large focus of the program entails maintaining contact with incarcerated youth and helping them remain in contact with their families.

Program Successes/Impact:

Seeing adults who first came in as children come back as adults in a better state than their own parents. Key Lessons/Challenges: The program is under staffed. Youth find it difficult to take advantage of the program because they must be labelled as "high risk" in order to become clients.

Program in operation since:

1999.

Program:

Ongoing.