Filed under: campaign news
We would like to welcome the RCMP, Kathy Letham and an anonymous donor to our of 21 Challengers!
We are also especially pleased to announce that we have managed to raise our ambitious goal of $21K for this campaign!
Thank you to our 21 Challengers, all our supporters and to those who helped spread the word about our library.
The students and staff of Samuel Hearne can now expect to see a major influx of new materials and big changes to our once neglected library space! Even though our fundraising goal has been met, we will still be updating this blog with news about the library so please check back or subscribe to our rss feed.
Filed under: community initiatives
An article about the joint elder-youth exchange run by SHSS, the Inuvik Youth Center and Ingamo Friendship Hall is in the current issue of the Inuvik Drum. Thanks to the elders and youth who came out to participate!
A youth publication will be released soon, and will keep this space updated regarding material produced by ICS. All materials will be available in the SHSS library.
We have also been meeting Centennial Public Library to help develop workshops for teaching our students academic skills to launch for the Sept 08 school year.
Good news to report from yesterday night’s board meeting – the IDEA has joined The 21 Challenge and staffing the library is now under discussion.
Community members have expressed concerns about the current state of the library and we would like to note that cutting library funding is a nation wide trend, and in no way particular to SHSS or even the Beaufort-Delta region. Having the DEA on board is a major step towards reversing this negative trend, and it will take time to get back on track, so let’s keep this campaign positive and focus on the slow but steady revival of the school library!
In other news, we’ve been on Northwinds again and there’s an article about the library in this week’s edition of News/North.
Schools on Board came to SHSS again with students from all over the world to discuss climate change. In addition, Lucette Barber made a generous donation on behalf of Schools on Board. Thanks so much!
Today is the last day of the 21 Challenge, and we still have a long way to go before we reach our goal of $21 000. As such, the campaign is being extended to 21 Inuvik days; locals should know exactly what we mean by that! The good news is we have already raised enough funding to now make a large purchase order, enough to qualify for the best sliding scale discount from a number of educational publishers.
This site will continue to be updated. Keep checking back or subscribe to our rss feed for further news and info about great programs the SHSS library will be facilitating with other organizations in town.
Filed under: campaign news, community initiatives, students | Tags: elders, ingamo hall, inuvik youth center, shell
We have a new 21 Challenger: Shell Canada! Applications usually take several weeks for large corporations to process, but Shell contacted us and gave us an immediate donation. Major thanks to Shell’s speedy response!
We also finished up our Nevada ticket boxes at the dome tonight. Our apologies to those who came after we sold out, and thanks for supporting our SHSS sports teams through playing Bingo.
In programming news, the joint elder-youth exchange organized by the SHSS library, the Inuvik Youth Center and the Ingamo Hall Friendship Center turned out quite well. A heartfelt thank you to the elders and Samuel Hearne students who participated in this exchange that addressed the need to bridge this generation gap. Discussion ran over 3 hours, and many ideas were shared. Keep an eye out for an IYC youth produced publication that will be distributed around town soon! I’ll also keep this blog updated with news about when content taped by the ICS will air on APTN.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
We have wonderful news today from The 21 Challenge: First Air has stepped up to the plate as a shipping sponsor for the SHSS Book Drive! This considerable committment of transporting over 25 boxes of heavy books to Inuvik comes after weeks of seeking a sponsor for the books Squatterz has been collecting for our school. These new and lightly used materials will include supplementary materials for school curriculum, aboriginal materials, classic fiction, and recent periodicals.
It has been a great pleasure to work with First Air’s team and we commend them for supporting literacy initiatives in the north. Quyannaini and mashi choo, First Air!
We have some great library news to report this weekend:
1) We now have study carrels! SHSS student Andrew Fehr and his mother donated their time, vehicle and manpower to help us move a study carrel donated by Inuvik Centennial Library to our school. Having quiet study carrels in the revamped library was a request made by our students so we’re pleased to have this new furniture. Thanks for all the heavy lifting!
2) We have another 21 Challenger: Barb Dillon from Yellowknife. Thank you for stopping by our school and contributing to our fundraiser!
3) Plans for a youth-elder joint exchange with the Inuvik Youth Center and Ingamo Friendship Hall are underway. All media produced will become a part of the Kendra Sittichinli Memorial Collection. Will keep the newsfeed updated on developments for this exciting exchange.
Filed under: community initiatives, students | Tags: fundraising, kendra sittichinli, memorial
Today we are pleased to announce a very special initiative in honour of Kendra Sittichinli. Kendra was a young high school graduate who passed away last summer. She was an active, involved member of her community and to celebrate her life, the Samuel Hearne Secondary School library will be naming our special aboriginal collection after her.
You can become involved in this initiative by helping friends of Kendra purchase a letter of her name. Our shop class has already offered to construct the letters. $21K can seem like a daunting goal, but every little effort counts, and the more the community becomes involved in the library space, the more enriched and enlivened it will be. This is a wonderful way for you and others you know to help build a unique library resource for our students that will help promote their native languages and traditions, showcase positive role models, and to provide them with access to the knowledge they need to understand their histories and their current environment.
All funding raised will go towards developing the Kendra Sittichinli Memorial Special Aboriginal Collection. The special aboriginal collection already has new materials, many of which have been generously donated by the Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Center, the Gwich’in Tribal Council and individual donors – but we would like to build up our collection to include more items like:
- materials dealing with current social issues (e.g. residential schooling, diabetes, higher education etc.) written specifically for aboriginal youth
- materials featuring the achievements of young aboriginal artists, writers, musicians, activists, scientists etc.
- more documentaries about the North and its indigenous peoples
- reference materials for indigenous groups in N. America and around the world
For more information about this initiative or about the special collection, please contact Erica Sum at shssinuvik AT gmail DOT com.
Vice Principal Mr Guy supervises student clean up to wash our dusty stacks and the reorganization of our materials into proper order
We have a very special student initiative brewing behind the scenes and hopefully we’ll be able to update you all about it soon. But today’s post is about what a great help our Samuel Hearne students have been! In addition to joining our 21 Tag Team, student volunteers have been hard at work since January, fixing our library space. The library has had a constant influx of students to help sort our collection, assist in its weeding, pack outdated and damaged books to be discarded, and now they’re cleaning our stacks and reorganizing materials into their proper Dewey Decimal order.
To our student library volunteers, quyannaini and mahsi choo!
Filed under: campaign news | Tags: fundraising, inuvik, inuvik gas, irc, nevada tickets, nt, nwt, tag team
What a great way to end the week: with the successful sale of Nevadas (pull-tab tickets) at the Dome and another donation! A program from Inuvik Gas and the IRC has also joined The 21 Challenge!
Our 21 tags are also generating a bit of a buzz: will be posting photos of our tag team efforts soon.
