Funding for Katimavik should be included in upcoming budget
TheStar.com – Opinion/Editorials – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised $25 million for young Canadians to gain work and life experience, travel the country and perform community service. The best way to do that is to restore funding to Katimavik.
Feb 14 2016. Editorial
Among Katimavik’s alumni are the rich, the famous and the dedicated.
Though it’s not a school or university, some of its “graduates” say it gave them the best education they ever had.
Indeed, the national exchange and volunteer program was succeeding brilliantly in its mandate to prepare young people to be responsible citizens who make positive change in their own lives and communities until its $16 million in funding was axed in 2012 by the Harper government.
But the organization will hopefully soon be back in full swing. In last year’s election campaign, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised $25 million for young Canadians to gain work and life experience, travel the country and perform community service. Trudeau did not mention Katimavik (an Inuktitut word meaning “meeting place”) by name, but his pledge describes the program in a nutshell.
The organization was launched back in 1977, the brainchild of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau and one of his closest political friends, Liberal Sen. Jacques Hébert. It may have been born in the spirit of the anything-goes 1970s, but over the following decades it more than proved its worth. The 35,000 young people who passed through the program contributed more than 30 million volunteer hours — which Katimavik calculates would have been worth $189.6 million if they’d been paid.
At the same time, Katimavik’s programs inspired both Canadian unity and a broader sense of the world by helping participants learn about other cultures and ways of life in this vast country. For some highly accomplished people, it provided a vital first step on the path to success.
“Katimavik opened a window for me,” remembers Patrick Pichette, Google Inc.’s former chief financial officer, who shipped out to British Columbia with the program after finishing high school in Montreal to volunteer with the handicapped, restore historic sites and work in a logging camp. “There was a whole world out there to see. It was like the first stop.”
It was a similar story for Dr. Joanne Liu, international president of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). She joined Katimavik after high school to do community work. That inspired her to visit Mali for three months on a volunteer exchange program run by Canadian Crossroads International. And that experience moved her to become a physician and get involved in humanitarian work. She has since worked in more than 20 field missions around the world.
As it stands, Katimavik has been on life support since 2012, using a $300,000 grant from the Quebec government to run an environmental internship program. It also operates two privately funded projects to support and encourage aboriginals and other young people to perform volunteer work.
Katimavik’s supporters hope Trudeau will breathe new life into the organization in his government’s first federal budget. He did, after all, chair its board of directors from 2002 to 2006. And after Harper cut the program, Trudeau entered a charity boxing match against Conservative Sen. Patrick Brazeau sporting Katimavik’s orange and green colours on his shoulder. He won.
Let’s hope he will live up to his election promise and Katimavik will rise from the ashes. Our young people are worth it.
< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2016/02/14/funding-for-katimavik-should-be-included-in-upcoming-budget-editorial.html >
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, multiculturalism, participation, youth
This entry was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2016 at 10:30 am and is filed under Inclusion Debates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
Leave a Reply
Recent Comments