Hi there. Thank you for being so intrigued. I apologize for the lack of information earlier.
My program is Ka Ni Kanichihk Incorporation in central Winnipeg. We run various programs out of our organization that deal with the youth and with young adults. The youngest youth we've presented to has been nine years old, and the oldest youths we've presented to have been up to, I believe, the age of 26. These are after-school programs that Ka Ni Kanichihk provides for the inner-city indigenous people in the core of the city where there are more low-income individuals.
We use the programs that are run out of Ka Ni Kanichihk to present to them—the UMatter program. The program has been around for two years, but unfortunately because of COVID we had to stop presenting the program. Now that we have finally been able to present, it's been almost every evening from Monday to Friday. I have an elder who comes in with me and we tag-team or take turns. She will provide an indigenous teaching to our youth, who are urban youth, because they haven't had the opportunity to learn these traditions here in the city. We get to provide that knowledge that they've been lacking as youth living in the city. They soak it in. They love it.
With what she talks about with her indigenous teachings, I incorporate the statistics and some of the things we see that are very violent—like in our music, in our social media, our movies, our video games and things like that. We're able to relate to the youth so that they have an understanding of how much teen dating violence there is. Unfortunately, there is quite a bit with indigenous people, because we have those traumas that have been passed down from generation to generation. It's educating our youth with these types of programs that have been very beneficial so far.