Iqaluit non-profit raising funds for “wellness hub”

Iqaluit’s Qaujigiartiit Health Research Centre has plans to build a community wellness hub but needs help raising enough money to get other sources of funding.

This project, called the Inuusirvik Wellness Hub, will be something like a mall for community well-being, housing three non-profit organizations.

It will also have a flexible space for other cultural Inuusirvik Wellness Hub or health services to use on a rotating basis for workshops and training.

“Most of this programming is already happening,” said Gwen Healey Akearok, executive and scientific director of the centre.

“We just don’t have the space.”

While Ilisaqsivik Society and Tasiuqtigiit Hand-in-Hand Daycare are partners in the project, there will be much more to the hub than just health research, Inuit-specific counselling and early childhood education.

The Makimautiksat Youth Camp and the Inunnguiniq parenting program will also be part of the hub.

Additionally, preschool, daycare and after-school services will be offered.

There will even be Indigenous doula services available.

Healey Akearok said the hub will provide space for cooking, sewing, and tool-making workshops.

And the whole upper level of the two-storey building will be dedicated to education and training.

As well, professional development programs will be offered there for service providers. It would include cultural competency courses, and facilitator and counsellor training for hub programming.

“It will be a place where services come to families,” said Healey Akearok.

Raising funds

The non-profit requires $4 million in total for the project. However, it has already received a $1-million anonymous donation.

In order to apply for other funding and grants, Qaujigiartiit needs another $1.5 million in capital.

For that, it started a Gofundme page on Jan. 16.

In eight days, it raised $1,600 of the $1.5 million goal.

The plan is for the wellness hub to open next spring. But that depends on how the funding comes together.

Current system is fragmented

“We are operating out of spaces wherever we can find it,” Healey Akearok said.

She calls the current state of community wellness programs in Iqaluit a “fragmented model,” where families must navigate a complicated system at many shifting locations.

Non-profit social services, workshops and training courses often take place in bed and breakfasts or small apartments.

Qaujigiartiit wants to see these services coordinated in one building.

“There is often discourse about what we are and are not capable of in our communities,” said Healey Akearok.

“We know there is a way. This hub is the way forward.”