The Ultimate Goal: The Frisbee Challenge
- Tiffany Head | June 05, 2015
The fourth annual Fred Sasakamoose Aboriginal Youth Leadership & Wellness Program was held on May 28-30. The program was set up to encourage leadership and development of youth through sport, recreation and health. Empowering youth to empower others is the ultimate goal and mission of the program.
The youth take back what they have learned from the program and they teach other youth in their communities. In the program, the grade 11 participants learn various sport activities such as water polo, jitsitsu, pow wow dancing, jigging, and frisbee among other activities.
Jennifer Love Green, one of the organizers, collaborates with Sask. Ultimate Players Association when she started the program. SUPA sends in two trainers to teach the students how to play ultimate Frisbee.
Green wanted to do something new this year by having the youth develop an ultimate rec league that is tied to ultimate Frisbee.
“It will empower them as leaders in their communities and help to build capacity for organized recreation for the youth. My 'ultimate-ultimate' goal is to have teams come to Regina next year for a provincial tournament,” said Lovegreen.
She will need to work on the funding for that initiative and says that it would be a great challenge for the youth to work towards and the next years participants will see what it possible in their communities and she hopes that it continues to spread and build.
Morgan Rope from Carry the Kettle First Nation was asked if she would take back what she learned from this program says that it is her plan and never knew Frisbee could be played competitively. Her favourite part was meeting new people.
“It’s a good thing to have different people different nations to get together and get to know each other,” said Rope.
The program is also linked with the Health Advocacy Research Training program. The HART program was created last year by Dr. JoLee Sasakamoose as a mentorship program. They have since joined the Fred Sasakamoose program to mentor the students in attendance. Last year Dr. JoLee stated the purpose of why the HART program was started.
Dr. JoLee Sasakammose says: “The overall purpose of this program is to utilize strengths-based interventions to promote healthier relationships and develop youth leadership skills in the area of health advocacy in order to increase youth engagement, connectedness, and overall well-being”.
With the these two programs joined along with Sask. ultimate, the students participating will learn all the tools they need to go back to their communities as leaders and have a chance at starting their own initiatives, especially in creating their leagues in ultimate Frisbee in their communities.
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