Biwaase’aa after-school program finds limited funding

Sharing circles are just one of the activities planned by youth outreach worker Touchan Fiddler after the Biwaase’aa program received funding for another year of operations.
“With the sharing circles we are always trying to share stories from what our Elders shared with us,” said Fiddler, who is implementing the Biwaase’aa after-school program at McKellar Park Central Public School and Sherbrooke Public School in Thunder Bay. “They need to hear these stories. I think that was the most important part of our lives back in the day. We would spend time with Elders and listen to stories — that’s where we would get life’s lessons.”
Fiddler will also be doing physical activities with the elementary school students at the two schools.
“We’re showing them different sports to play,” Fiddler said. “We feed them also with healthy snacks.”
Fiddler estimated Sherbrooke’s Aboriginal student population makes up about 85 per cent of the student body and McKellar’s about 80 per cent.
“We average about 30 students a day,” Fiddler said about the McKellar after-school program intake.
The Biwaase’aa program recently received enough financial support from the federal government, Ontario Ministry of Tourism and Culture, Royal Bank and a number of other sources, including unsolicited donations from individuals and local organizations, to keep operating for the 2012/2013 school year.
“We have three full-time youth workers, down from seven,” said Paul Francis, Biwaase’aa’s program manager. “We’re still offering seven after-school (programs), so we were able to hire a new (full-time) position, an after-school coordinator.”
Francis said the after-school coordinator will do the planning for the after-school program and the youth outreach workers will be assigned to two schools each instead of the one school they were responsible for last year.
“We’re relying a lot more on part-time staff,” Francis said. “We have two part-time staff at each after-school site.”
In addition to Fiddler’s assignments at McKellar and Sherbrooke, after-school programs will also be delivered at Ogden Community School, Our Lady of Charity School, St. Ann School, St. Martin School and Pope John Paul II School.
The nutritional program offered in previous years will not be available.
The Biwaase’aa program was originally developed in 2004 by the Thunder Bay Urban Aboriginal Strategy to help address child poverty issues by increasing life skills of children, youth and their families through strategies of cultural awareness, academic improvement, structured activities and health nutritional supplementation.
After a significant portion of the funding was cut in 2007, the program continued providing its after-school program, in-school program, nutritional programs and structured activities through Shkoday Abinojiiwak Obimiwedoon.
Shkoday Abinojiiwak Obimiwedoon board president Corinne Fox announced the program was in danger of folding last November due to expiring funding from the Office of the Federal Interlocutor, a branch of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada.
“The program is huge and it has made tremendous impacts for many of our Native children and children in general within our communities,” Fox said at the time. “There is less divide and more understanding and appreciation for Aboriginal culture, tradition and beliefs.”
The Biwaase’aa program required about $700,000 to provide the level of services provided in previous years for this current school year, but Francis said they came up about $200,000 short of that goal.
He said the federal government provided $300,000 for 2011/2012 and is currently providing $250,000 for 2012/2013 and $200,000 for 2013/2014.
“They kept us going and then we would get in other grants, like United Way, Royal Bank, city funding to kind of help us with program costs,” Francis said.