Child-care centres receive Indigenous learning grants

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This article was published 30/09/2022 (1207 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two Westman child-care centres say they’ll use grant money obtained from the federal and provincial governments to enhance education opportunities for their students on Indigenous topics.

On Wednesday, representatives from both levels of government announced that 24 child-care facilities in Manitoba would be sharing $300,000 in grant money to implement Indigenous-focused programming.

Two of those facilities are located in Westman: the Assiniboine Early Learning Centre at Assiniboine Community College’s campus on Victoria Avenue East and the Souris Co-operative Early Learning Program.

At the Assiniboine daycare, executive director Melanie Heinrichs said the funding had been applied for before she assumed the position and was received by her centre back in June or July.

“We’re looking at what we have available here,” she said. “We’re working with Kris [Desjarlais], our director of Indigenous education here at the college, to see how we can train our staff. We’re going to be having elders come for a visit here at the centre, so that’ll help with our children.”

They’re also going to be doing blanket exercises with staff, which will see some staff from the daycare at the college’s Parkland campus in Dauphin attend alongside Brandon-based staff.

Heinrichs said she hopes the lessons learned won’t just benefit students and staff at the daycare, but also parents and other members of the college’s community.

She did not want to say how much funding her centre received because she wasn’t sure how the amount compares to other recipients. ACC’s early learning centre in Brandon has space for 56 children and 40 at the Parkland location.

In 2020, the centre opened a new expansion at its Brandon location. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, a grand opening ceremony was unable to be held.

Because of that as well as the centre’s 40th anniversary, an event is being held in celebration on Oct. 13 at 4 p.m.

At the Souris co-op, director Jenna Francey said the funds will be used to continue programming they launched last year.

“Last year, we actually bought some sharing circles we put in our centre,” she said. “We also bought some dream catchers and reading resources to open up the conversation. We wanted to get an elder to come in and discussed things, but COVID kinda wrecked that for us.”

Francey said she’s hopeful they can arrange for an elder to visit this year to provide their students with teachings and perform smudging with them.

According to her, the response so far from parents on the Indigenous programming has been “really good.”

“They taught them the seven teachings last year,” she said. “A lot of our children would go home and say ‘be respectful like the buffalo.’”

The children brought those lessons home to their parents, who in turn asked the centres to learn more themselves.

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