The first family volunteer camp just ended this summer at College Kiuna, in Odanak!
The first family volunteer camp of summer 2019 ended with great success! These two rewarding weeks made the 7 parents and 11 kids that were welcomed by Kiuna College, our new hosting partner, really happy.
The Institution Kiuna focuses teaching First Nation citizens how to excel in the workforce, how to proudly show off their cultural heritage, how to be socially responsible, how to take care of their community’s well-being and how to be open-minded. Its mission is to make higher education more accessible for First Nations.
The volunteer families arrived on Saturday, June 29th with their camp leader and educator ready to start their two weeks of volunteering by helping Indigenous youth celebrate their culture and identity. They were housed in residences that were suited to their needs.
For some families, this adventure was an opportunity to travel to Quebec. Changing the scenery and meeting new people allowed families to get out of their comfort zone and adapt to different situations. It was necessary to find a time and place to only gather the adults so they could talk and get to know each other in order to create a group spirit. Managing and respecting the different education styles of each person was also important. This made learning and sharing each other’s lifestyles possible, which improved the relationship between parents and their kids.
Fun and play for the kids!
Volunteering with Chantiers jeunesse and its partners, it’s a workweek of 30 hours that allows our volunteers to develop practical skills a lot more than they think.
Our volunteers had two four-day weeks to help the camp scrape paint off buildings and to give them a fresh coat. During the second week, the technical expert suggested building a structure in the river so the water can flow to the on-site artificial lake and redoing a trench on the side of the lake. The camp’s board of directors also provided a sawing machine so that the young volunteers could help with wood cutting during their last days.
A sneak peek of the work done!
Volunteering with Chantiers jeunesse and its partners, it’s a workweek of 30 hours that allows our volunteers to develop practical skills a lot more than they think.
At Kiuna College, our volunteer families had the chance to paint its buildings, participate in lining up fir tree branches in an autumn hut, weed the site in order to embellish the college and classify hundreds of documents for the Alanis Obomsawin Documentation Centre.
At the end of the two weeks, Kiuna College thanked the volunteers by cooking traditional meals made from game meat that they shared with the community and the college’s staff. The families left happy knowing they helped Indigenous youth celebrate their culture and identity in two short weeks! Congrats to our engaged volunteer families!
Check out our volunteer camp pHOTOS!
* THE END *
You did a volunteer camp and would like to share your experience? Share your stories, photos and videos to cj@cj.qc.ca