The Skookum Jim Friendship Centre opened in downtown Whitehorse in 1962. The friendship centre started as a meeting hall for urban aboriginal people to meet and socialize and support one another when they moved into the urban area from the communities.
In 1983 the centre was renovated and became a program and service delivery organization for urban aboriginal people. The friendship centre is status-blind and accepts all who come to the centre, including status, non-status, first nation, Métis, Inuit, and all others. The Skookum Jim Friendship Centre is governed by a volunteer board of directors made up of first nations members and Inuit.
The friendship centre is one of 120 friendship centres across Canada that provide employment training programs and services that empower aboriginal children, youth, women, men, elders, and families. It's a place where we gather to explore, learn, practise, and celebrate our cultures. The friendship centres are a safe place to access healing and support for our clients.
The friendship centre in Whitehorse offers an after-school tutoring program for urban aboriginal high school students, a prenatal program for moms and their infants, a diabetes prevention program, and a recreation and leisure program for children and youth. In that program, we're also providing programming at four elementary schools in the city four days a week.
We have a Skookum Jim annual folklore show, a student training and financial services department, a youth diversion program, and a traditional parenting program in which we take participants and elders out on the land. We have the Urban Multipurpose Aboriginal Youth Centre, which offers youth leadership programming. We also operate the northern Urban Multipurpose Aboriginal Youth Centre regional desk for the north, we have a youth emergency shelter outreach program, and we provide referral services to clients.
In the 2008-09 fiscal year, the after-school tutoring program provided aboriginal high school students with English, math, social studies, science, and life skills training. The life skills training included Food Safe cooking classes, first aid, driver training, and a summer booster camp. Thirty-seven urban aboriginal high school students from grades eight to twelve attended the tutoring program. Three of them graduated in June 2009.
The prenatal nutrition program had 63 registered participants in 2009, which was nine more than in 2008 and 21 more than in 2007. The recreation program had 2,159 participants over all of our programs for ages six to twenty-four. The aboriginal youth diversion program opened 46 youth files in 2008-09, with 61% of the offenders being female.
The student training and financial services program had ten ARDA CRF clients—six male, four female—and eight ARDA EI clients: five female and three male. The ARDA training included TDG, H2S, WHMIS, chain saw safety, first aid, driver training, website development, college prep, computer training, etc.
The NWT post-secondary program had ten female participants: nine accessing Yukon College and one leaving the territory to go to the University of Victoria. Post-secondary training was mainly accessed for college prep, office administration, and in one case business administration. The youth leadership program has six aboriginal youth council members who oversee it and 794 youth participants aged from 10 to 24 years old in 2009.
In the 2008-09 fiscal year, the youth emergency shelter had 267 calls from 60 different youth. The safe bed was accessed 187 times during the year. The majority of the youth self-refer to the emergency shelter program, and the majority are reconnected with their families.
Concerning poverty, what we've seen from our client base is lower levels of education in the urban aboriginal population, a school system not meeting the needs of our aboriginal children and youth, a low rate of high school graduation among Yukon aboriginal youth, low employment within the urban aboriginal population, an increased number of aboriginal births, a large number of single-parent families, insufficient housing for women and children, a lack of healthy food for the women and children, an increased rate of diabetes in the aboriginal people, an increased number of youth offenders, a higher rate of female aboriginal youth offenders, a gap in housing for youth 17 to 18 who age out for placement in care and are too young for their own housing. We see increased rates of substance abuse in youth and adults, youth with mental health and FASD disabilities, a lack of housing with supported living services, individuals with disabilities becoming victims of predators. We see a greater need for family support services and for safe transportation for our youth; elder neglect and abuse; a barrier to, and a lack of, adequate housing for our aboriginal elders. There are minimal support services and programs for urban aboriginal peoples; first nations and friendship centres and other non-profits; and inadequate infrastructure to meet the growing needs of the community.
What we see as needs for urban aboriginal people and others within the community are: access to housing for all groups, including women, children, single-parent families, elders, and the youth; specialized housing for those with mental health issues or addictions and for the elders; family support services—we find that even if you do provide housing or other services, they need somebody there with them—youth substance abuse treatment programs; access to healthy foods; access to educational funding, including living allowances, on-the-job training opportunities, post-secondary training in the area of trades and at the college level; employment opportunities; entry-level training positions within the local government; increased funding for ARDA training dollars for urban aboriginal people, and monitoring of the ARDA training dollars for urban aboriginal people to ensure that the funding is being used for the urban population; government and business looking to aboriginal communities to fill the labour shortages; partnerships to move urban aboriginal people forward; infrastructure dollars for non-profits delivering programs and services; friendship centres input on urban aboriginal policy sought by all levels of government.
In the north, access to services is difficult for individuals living in poverty, because of transportation, weather, and living conditions. The northern safety net is small, which causes a high rate of burnout among service providers and the communities.
To meet the needs of the north in reducing poverty, partnerships between all levels of government and non-profits is required to access housing and home ownership for individuals. As well, the delivery of a careers program to assist individuals in securing a variety of educational opportunities that meet their needs and result in meaningful employment will further assist in reducing poverty.
Thank you.