Listing the skills of learning the art of pickling, making feta cheese and learning to live with a group of people as a few of the highlights of her experience, 19-year-old Sasha Ainsley is glowing with praise of her time in the Katimavik program.
The national initiative, which is entering its 35th year, provides learning opportunities through volunteer service for 17- to 21-year-olds, taking participants to communities across the country.
Katimavik - meaning "meeting place" in Inuktitut - is a learning program with a focus on the development of lifelong personal, professional and social competencies in the areas of civic engagement, healthy lifestyle, cultural discovery, official languages and environmental stewardship. According to the Katimavik website, for 2011-'12, Katimavik will be present in 104 communities in which more than 1,100 volunteers will be dispersed throughout Canada.
Squamish's Ainsley completed the program last year, spending a total of 5 months living and working on a farm near Winnipeg and another in Fort Langley, and claims that as a direct result of her participation in Katimavik, she has learned how to grow up. "I did so much growing," she said, "and I have matured quite a bit."
Her father, Michael, agrees.
He said he has noticed some major changes in her since her return from the program. "She has a very strong feeling of being able to succeed," he said. "She was a very strong success in the program, she is a lot more focused and she has a much better attitude, generally speaking."
Learning about the Katimavik program through her high school, Sasha embraced the project wholeheartedly and gained valuable life and work skills from the experience, said her father.
"Anybody would value that, when you learn to get along with and/or tolerate, depending on the situation, people that you live with for that period of time, in that close of a situation, it breeds a lot of tolerance and acceptance and understanding."
Sasha said she formed a close bond with the people in her group.
"I was working with what I now consider some of my best friends and family," she said.
Her Katimavik experience was a unique one. As a pilot partnership project, Sasha described her group as "pioneers."
"It was a pilot project that hadn't been done before," she said, adding that it combined WWOOFing (World-wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) with Katimavik and in her opinion, it was a success. She said there are plans to continue with the partnership.
Katimavik relies on those types of partnerships with more than 500 not-for-profit community organizations, and has established ties with groups such as the Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity and the YMCA.
Another Squamish resident who credits Katimavik for changing her life is Joan Fawcett. She participated in the program in 1983, while she was in search of a new life and an escape from what she describes as a "dead-end job" in retail at the time.
Fawcett spent three months in each of the communities of Val-d'Amour, New Brunswick, Cold Lake, Alta., and Milton, Ont.
Aside from the many life lessons learned from the experience of living with a group of people for a long time, Fawcett said it was when she was working in daycares and libraries in Cold Lake where she really felt like she was giving back to the community.
Yet it was her time working at Mountsberg, a conservation facility near Milton, where she drew her inspiration for her future career.
"That's where it changed my life," she said, noting that the experience of conducting maple syrup demonstrations and working at the wildlife rehabilitation centre prompted her to go back to school to study Outdoor Recreation at Capilano College, followed by a Masters in environmental education.
Fawcett has been employed at the North Vancouver Outdoor School as recreation leader for the past 18 years and credits her Katimavik experience with having led her to where she is today - working at an environmental education-focused school, a job she says she loves coming to each day.
To learn more about Katimavik, visit www.katimavik.org.
