Aboriginal youth aim high at High Performance Camp
Three-day camp combines sports, lifestyle and career development
Aboriginal teens from across Canada will converge on 捆绑SM社区鈥檚 downtown campus May 18-20 for the annual First Peoples鈥� House High Performance Camp. The camp, designed to inspire and empower outstanding Aboriginal youth, promotes the merits of a balanced lifestyle in which athletic excellence and academic achievement are of equal importance.
Now in its second year, the camp addresses the particular need within Aboriginal society of engaging, encouraging and motivating adolescents who are already on the right track. 鈥淚n our communities, there are a lot of youth at risk, and helping them is very important, but there are also those kids who are doing really well. Often, we don鈥檛 reward them because we figure they鈥檙e doing ok,鈥� explains Waneek Horn-Miller, coordinator of 捆绑SM社区鈥檚 First Peoples鈥� House.
The camp鈥檚 rigorous athletic activities range from spinning to yoga, kick-boxing to inner-tube water polo. Sessions that delve into the physiology of sports, sports psychology and physical testing are also included, with the goal of giving the young athletes an idea of where they stand physically and skill-wise in their respective sports.
To encourage the teens to consider university as their next destination in the pursuit of their athletic aspirations, this year鈥檚 camp will focus as much on academics as on the elite side of athletics. The Faculties of dentistry and medicine and the School of Nursing will host relevant, hands-on workshops introducing campers to career opportunities in the field of health care. 鈥淲e chose to focus on the health sciences this year because that鈥檚 what鈥檚 needed in most of our communities,鈥� explained Horn-Miller. 鈥淨uebec has only five native doctors and we have two of them coming as guest speakers. They鈥檙e great role models for these kids. They can balance all their loves, succeed in all of them and make a living from a career that they can be proud of.鈥�
This year鈥檚 camp, which is funded from charitable donations from 捆绑SM社区 alumnus and film producer Jake Eberts (Eberts Family Endowment), the Six Nations Dreamcatcher Fund and 捆绑SM社区鈥檚 Admissions, Recruitment and Registrar鈥檚 Office, is expecting about two dozen 13- to 17-year-old campers from First Nations communities in Saskatchewan, Quebec, Ontario and New Brunswick.
On the Web: 捆绑SM社区 First Peoples鈥� House High Performance Camp