Tuesday, September 24, 2013

The Cultural Preservation Initiative Program 2013


Well, it’s been a busy summer for the CES team.  We travelled from coast to coast across Canada to share new opportunities about how communities can celebrate the spirit and identity of their people through digital storytelling. Our passion for preserving indigenous cultures and finding innovative ways how communities can share their story drove us to create the Cultural Preservation Initiatives Program.

 
Clinton and Steve in Serpent River First Nation
We set aside $50,000 as part of our Corporate Social Responsibility to support local community development initiatives that ensure preservation of culture through responsible economic development and empowerment. We believe strongly in sustainable community development and the promotion of Canada’s unique cultures and we were excited to visit communities across Canada.

Throughout our travels we met with some amazing people, made new friends, shared a lot of laughs, and learned about the different communities and their culture, some of their challenges, and their thoughts on projects related to preserving their culture; in particular projects that encourage bridging the generational gap between Elders and Youth.


Workshop participants in Mississauga First Nation
The most powerful moment that we’ve learned was the drive that Youth had to create positive changes in their communities.  One of the younger participants in one of our workshops shared that she was so happy to see her community taking steps to involve the Youth and it was evident that there is a need for the community to work together to preserve and celebrate their culture. The Elders that participated were thrilled to see a project that focused on bringing the community together as a whole to preserve and celebrate their culture.  One of the Elders just responded ‘finally’ at the end of the workshop. This emphasized the need for these types of projects.

Hanging with the crew in Potlotek First Nation
The CES team would like to personally thank all of the communities that were part of this initiative!! It was a pleasure visiting your communities and meeting all of the amazing people.

Because of the success of this initiative we are planning to do it again! Contact us at 
1-877-444-5550 or email us at amanda@cescleints.com for more details.

Visit us at www.cesclients.com to learn more about what we do!

1 comment:

  1. This is great. We are also a youth-led indigenous people organization working for our cultural promotion and preservation in India http://biblehillyouthclub.wordpress.com The generation gap is one of the big problems that we face, culturally, socially and spiritually!

    Youths can play a vital roles in creating a developmental changes in the communty. We need to preserve our culture and traditions, no onw will do it for us. Other are trying to assimilate or neglect our own culture and tradition, which we have all the rights in the world to determine our development. Kudos to CES. We need to develop a development program with cultural identity.
    Joseph Joute

    ReplyDelete