Arctic Inspiration prize will deliver made-in-Nunavut health programming

Arctic Inspiration prize recipients FOXY with members of the AIP’s selection committee at the Dec. 10 awards ceremony. (PHOTO BY FRED CATTROLL/AIP)

This year’s Arctic Inspiration Prize recipients have high hopes that this year’s $1 million will go to good use teaching sexual health to young Nunavummiut.

On Dec. 10, the prize was awarded to the Northwest Territories-based Fostering Open eXpression among Youth, or FOXY, a program that promotes positive sexual health, leadership and coping skills among youth through art; traditional beading, theatre, digital storytelling and photography.

For Iqaluit-based sexual health research Gwen Healey, the news was “just very exciting, such a delightful surprise.”

Healey, whose doctoral work focuses on Nunavummiut youth and parent perspectives on sexual health, has worked for a long time with FOXY’s co-founders, Candice Lys and Nancy MacNeill.

Together, the women applied for grants to bring more sexual health programs to the North. In 2011-2012, the group secured a public health grant together.

Lys and MacNeill used the funds to found FOXY, while Healey used the money to develop a pilot program in Iqaluit: three arts-based workshops on sexual health for Grade 9 students, which were led by Sylvia Cloutier and Laakkuluk Bathory Williamson.

“It went really well, but we weren’t able to secure more funding,” Healey said.

But in 2015, Nunavut communities will have the ability to host that same kind of programming.

FOXY’s sexual health programming will be secondary school-based, for both male and female students, and offered where there’s support from the local school community, Healey said.

FOXY already plans to host peer leadership retreats for young men and women next summer, which will offer intensive arts-based education and training.

It’s not clear how the $1 million Arctic Inspiration prize money will be divided among the three territories, Healey said, but FOXY’s programming in Nunavut will be delivered by Nunavummiut.

“I firmly believe in this program,” she said. “The whole program was developed by Northerners. And the prize really acknowledged that we’re innovative and resourceful — we all really believe that we have something to offer.”