Ladies and gentlemen of the committee, on behalf of Ilisaqsivik's board of directors and staff, thank you for this invitation to appear before you today for this important discussion. My name is Jakob Gearheard, and I'm executive director of Ilisaqsivik Society.
Ilisaqsivik was established in 1997 by community members in Clyde River, a community of about a thousand people on the northeast coast of Baffin island. Ilisaqsivik was founded because the community was not happy with the existing mental health and social services and other wellness-related programs that were provided by the government. These services were not culturally relevant, they were not provided in Inuktitut, and they did not reflect Inuit values. In many instances throughout Nunavut this is still the case today.
Ilisaqsivik is a true grassroots, community-based Inuit organization. It is a Canadian registered charity and a Nunavut registered society. At Ilisaqsivik our mission is to encourage and support community wellness by providing safe spaces, resources, and programming that empower families and individuals to find healing and develop their strengths.
Ilisaqsivik was started by just a few people, but it has grown until today and strengthened over the years. Today we are the largest employer in our community, with more than 50 people in part-time and full-time positions. We are also the first employer for many community members. We offer employment training in many types of job skills.
In addition to our wellness centre, we operate the Ittaq heritage and research centre, which also houses a digital media centre. Last year we opened a hotel whose profits go to support Ilisaqsivik, one of the few examples of social entrepreneurship in Nunavut.
This last point is important, and I want to highlight it here. Ilisaqsivik has branched into social entrepreneurship because it needs to find ways to mitigate a serious funding struggle. Despite winning national awards for our work—including from the prime minister of Canada—and being held as a positive example of quality care closer to home by different government and Inuit organizations, nobody has stepped up to ensure our financial security. We survive project to project and year to year. We are always at risk of not securing the resources we need. So, while I tell you about the successes of our organization over the next few minutes—successes thanks to the dedication and hard work of our board and our staff and our community—you must understand that our funding security is a critical issue. We are constantly addressing an ongoing risk to our existence.
To fulfill our mission of supporting community wellness, we provide a wide range of programs. Last year we offered more than 80 programs. Our programs support all of our community members from pregnant women to children, teens, families, and elders. We provide programs related to education, culture, language, nutrition, land skills, health, wellness, and more. I cannot mention all of our programs as it would take too much time. But just to give you a few examples, we offer pre-school parents and tots, prenatal nutrition, land-based healing, cultural and hunting programs, youth drop-in, parenting programs, diabetes prevention, Inuktitut literacy, etc.
Land-based programs are the most important and successful programs we offer. We offer a variety of land-based programs including elder-youth camps and hunter training programs for youth. Local youth regularly have the opportunity to learn to hunt, fish, and practise on-the-land skills through our programming. They share their catch with the community. These programs contribute to food security by providing fresh meat to households and also passing knowledge and experience on to the next generation of hunters. Just last month, we held a three-week-long summer land program whereby more than 50 community members camped on the land and participated in facilitated cultural and healing activities. Our land programs are held in all seasons, for all ages, and everyone is welcome.
There is one other key area of Ilisaqsivik's services that I would like to highlight for you today, and it is our counselling services. One of our key achievements is providing culturally relevant counselling and counsellor training grounded in Inuit values and knowledge and provided in Inuktitut, for Inuit and by Inuit.
All across Nunavut, Inuit struggle to access appropriate mental health counselling and social services. In most cases the mental health services available to Inuit are from fly-in, southern-based counsellors and social workers who have minimal to no knowledge and experience with Inuit culture, do not speak Inuktitut, and do not understand the historical and cultural context of where they are working.
Inuit have always had counsellors who were recognized as trusted and respected people who had life experience, to whom others could talk when they needed to talk. These recognized people are in all of our communities. At Ilisaqsivik we decided that we needed to organize and empower these community-based counsellors. Our local counsellors wanted more training, but there were no training programs available to them. All available training was in English, based on southern-style counselling and based on southern approaches and values, so we built our own counsellors' training and mentorship program at Ilisaqsivik called Our Life's Journey.
The program started in 2007, and since then we have grown tremendously in our counsellor training. We offer a one-year program that has five modules to be completed. The program offers counselling and addictions training to people working in the health and social service fields in Inuit communities. The training is based on Inuit knowledge and values combined with useful approaches from many other sources, and it is delivered in Inuktitut. Training Inuit is our priority, but we also make exceptions for other front-line non-Inuit workers. We are inclusive. We want to collaborate with our mental health professionals, but we only provide training in Inuktitut and in the Inuit way.
Since 2007 over 110 people have participated in our training. The age of participants has ranged from 20 to 83 years old. To date, we have had participants from all 13 Qikiqtani communities, and also from several communities in the Kivalliq and Kitikmeot regions. In 2016 our counsellor training program became accredited by the Indigenous Certification Board of Canada, and as of now we have 38 graduates who have completed our full program.
The result of our counsellor training program is a network of professional counsellors with specialized Inuit-appropriate training available to clients in Inuktitut. Ilisaqsivik counsellors know the language. They know the culture and they know what clients need.
At Ilisaqsivik, as part of this program, we have a mobile trauma team. In the past, if there were a traumatic event in a community, southern-based workers would be flown in. Now communities are calling Ilisaqsivik to send assistance. We are responding with trained counsellors across Baffin. We can quickly send people to communities and to families to help in their own language, counsellors who understand the context, the culture, and the people they're helping. Based on our experience, we feel strongly that there should be mandatory training for any caregiver working in Nunavut, training that educates them about Inuit culture and history, but that is only the beginning.
The Government of Nunavut should hire more graduates from the Inuit counsellors and mentorship program and put these people in positions to help Inuit communities and families. They should also invest in programs like this to train more Inuit counsellors and caregivers and provide more culturally relevant services.
We are proud of our work at Ilisaqsivik and we wish more communities could have centres like Ilisaqsivik. In Nunavut, Ilisaqsivik is very unique. It is run by Inuit for Inuit and it is truly community based. We are exceptionally strong even though we struggle with funding and recognition for Inuit ways.
I am grateful for the opportunity to share experiences with this committee and truly believe that the only way to build stronger, more resilient, and healthier communities is by all of us working together, listening to and respecting one another.
Thank you.