In 2005, EPIC entered into a three-year partnership with the Bay St. Lawrence Community Centre (Amy MacKinnon, Director) and Heartwood Institute in the ADAPT (Asset Development, Adventure & Peer Tutoring) project. This was funded by a grant to the Bay St. Lawrence Community Centre from the Nova Scotia Gaming Foundation.
the village of Bay St. Lawrence, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada
photo by: Ed Warner © 06-07
Bay St. Lawrence is a rural fishing community in the Highlands of Cape Breton. The purpose of this partnership is to assist in the delivery of gambling prevention strategies for the youth of this area.
The initiative had three parts.
- The first is for the Community Centre to institute and maintain their own peer tutoring program with the guidance, assistance and support of EPIC and the Youth Peer Program. It began in 2005 under the tutelage of Amy MacKinnon. Youth volunteers travelled to several of the Youth Peer tutor training sessions in Sydney, Nova Scotia to learn how to be tutor/mentors. The program has been in place for two years with no shortage of elementary-aged clients or youth volunteers.
- The second strategy is to provide area youth with opportunities to experience the natural beauty of the world they inhabit, in new ways. Heartwood Institute is providing them with a variety of outdoor camping trips—one of them a winter excursion!
- The third component is a 3-year investing project in which EPIC provides interested youth with workshops, virtual portfolios, online help and on-going contests in how to do responsible investing.
2009 Update:
While this project has now entered into EPIC’s past rather than current projects, we are pleased to note that the Peer Tutoring portion of this project continues at the Bay St. Lawrence Community Centre one day a week under Amy MacKinnon’s supervision.
See also:
Summaries of EPIC’s other projects and programs: 1997 – 2006
EPIC’s Current Projects
