Spilyay Tymoo, Warm Springs, Oregon
July 20, 2016
Page 3
Native Aspirations helping youth, community
Y oung people and their
crew leaders are working
around the reservation on
many community projects:
From clearing and clean-
ing around the Simnasho
Longhouse, to cutting and
edging in the Sunnyside
neighborhood.
From building a shed at
the Family Resource Center,
to cleaning up used fire-
works from July Fourth, to
working on the fields around
the Community Center:
These are just some of
the many projects of the Na-
tive Aspirations Soaring for
the Future work program.
Big changes
Native Aspirations
A statement in the Warm
Springs Health and Human
Services Branch mission
reads:
“... The people have the
need, and have expressed the
desire, for the community to
provide better support to its
members through high qual-
ity healthcare, elimination of
substance abuse, and sup-
port of families.”
This was the foundation
for the creation of the Warm
Springs Native Aspirations
Soaring for the Future work
program.
The Warm Springs Native
Aspirations Soaring for the
Future work program builds
capacity within War m
Springs’ workforce by pro-
viding training opportunities
for youth, 14-18 years of
age, and college students.
In designing the program,
the Health and Human Ser-
Dave McMechan/Spilyay
A Native Aspirations Soaring for the Future work crew built a shed at the Health
and Human Services building. The mentor for the project was Nathan Brown. He
and Donminic Nelson are the crew leaders for the first-year workers.
vices Branch looked at how
to create ways for the youth
to bond with their families,
schools, peers and commu-
nity through community ser-
vice projects, mentoring and
work experience.
What concluded from
these discussions are the pro-
gram-created avenues to
gain work and life skills to
assist in building a founda-
tion for a healthy workforce,
in addition to healthy com-
munity members.
For instance, each partici-
pant throughout their train-
ing within this program has
an opportunity to be ex-
posed to education in some
of the following areas:
Cultural diversity, finance,
career planning, injury pre-
vention, conscious discipline,
Phar macology education
and prevention; and other
health related topics.
Native Aspirations’ work
experience partners are:
Culture and Heritage,
Family Preservation, Health
and Human Services’ Pre-
vention, Fire Management,
Early Childhood Education
Center, Vital Statistics, Hu-
man Resources, the Utilities
Department, OIS, and the
Senior Program.
Surveying with the Native Food Sovereignty Project
Did you know that the
Warm Springs community
was once a stable and self-
sufficient land where tribal
members could provide for
themselves by gathering tra-
ditional food and game, gar-
dening, farming, and raising
animals?
The Tkwatat waq’ishwitai
Food Sovereignty Project is
a way to assess the food sys-
tem on the reservation by
asking various questions per-
taining to agriculture, tradi-
tional foods, and the local
community’s food habits.
We are working with
many local residents to get
their perspective on the lo-
cal food system, and trying
to find the source behind all
the health issues that are be-
ginning to rise in War m
Springs.
We have been doing sur-
veys and one-on-one inter-
views with locals.
We have a Facebook page
and we will be at the Warm
Springs Outdoor Market ev-
ery Friday staffing a booth.
These surveys and inter-
Summer meals program for young people
Nutritious meals are
provided free of charge
to all youth 18 and
younger, thanks to the
Summer Food Service
Meal Program.
Breakfast is served at the
Warm Springs Youth Center
in the Boys & Girls Club
from 8:15-9 a.m.; and lunch
from 11:45 to 12:30.
Parents, please remind
your child to clean up af-
ter themselves after they
eat –take any leftovers or
containers to the garbage
cans.
views will begin to point us in
the right direction to fixing
these various health issues.
We will be doing multiple
surveys over the course of
this summer, as well as a com-
munity dinner to allow us to
ask more in-depth questions
in a shorter amount of time.
We will be uploading all
the dates, surveys and results
to the Tkwatat waq’ishwitai
Food Sovereignty Project
Facebook page.
This project is a collabo-
ration between OSU Exten-
sion 4-H and the Native As-
pirations Program.
For more information, call
us at 541-553-3238. Thank
you.
Ellise and Jackie.
There have been some
big changes for Native As-
pirations. Some of the main
ones are:
Forty hours of health
related training.
Every employee in Na-
tive Aspirations attended 40
hours of health related train-
ing. This was a requirement
of the program, because the
dollars that funded the pro-
gram are health related dol-
lars.
The training was held
during the first week of
work, and the theme of the
training was ‘Trauma.’
The training covered top-
ics like historical trauma,
grief, domestic violence, and
trauma and the brain.
At the training the men-
tor groups also had time to
start planning their commu-
nity service projects.
Work crew: A majority
of first-year workers (the
14-year olds) spend half of
their time in the program on
a work crew, working on a
number of community im-
provement projects.
They spend three and a
half weeks on the work
crew, and three and a half
weeks at a worksite.
The main focus of the
community improvement
projects are Elmer Quinn
Park, the Stick Game bar-
becue area behind the Com-
munity Wellness Center, and
the baseball and softball
4202
Holliday St.
fields.
The works inlcudes clean-
ing, weedingd, reseeding,
table and benche repair,
painting, etc.
Other projects include
fuel reduction at elder
homes in rural areas, street
and sidewalk clean up, play-
ground clean up, etc.
Mentoring: Native As-
pirations hired seven high
school age mentors, and
three college worker men-
tors, completing eight weeks
of one-on-one mentoring
with every youth in the pro-
gram.
Each mentor is assigned
between nine to 11 other
youth in the program. The
mentors spend 30 to 60 min-
utes each week with those
youth, as well as doing job
shadowing at their job sites
for 20 hours each week.
Community ser vice
projects: Each mentor
group also completes a com-
munity service project. Each
group member must com-
plete 10 hours of work to-
wards that project.
The location of Native
Aspirations Soaring for the
Future Work Program is at
the Health and Human Ser-
vices Branch administra-
tion,
1144
War m
Springs Street.
The point of contact are
Reina Estimo and Amanda
Henderson.
Call 541-
615-0555