During social distancing, Remote Trainings have been a key touchpoint for Community Mentors to stay connected and share ways to demonstrate care and facilitate modified programming for children and youth.

The Remote Training series that began in January continued throughout the spring months to respond to training requests identified by Community Mentors.

This session focused on:

• The four types of bullying: physical, verbal, social and online.
• The connection between bullying prevention/intervention and the creation of safe and inclusive spaces.
• The 5 pillars of trauma-informed practice that contribute to safe and inclusive spaces.
• Strategies for equipping children and youth with the skills to build these spaces.

At this training, Community Mentors learned about:

• How variety can enhance participants’ experience and learning in a program.
• The importance of variety, ideas for different types of play and strategies for increasing variety on a consistent basis.

This interactive session was all about creating opportunities for CMs to:

• Learn and share with one another about their programs and strategies.
• Discuss how they have applied their learning from Remote Trainings to their program.
• Set goals for the coming months of program.
• Brainstorm some resources & supports they can access along the way.

Co-facilitated by The Indigenous Food Circle, this session covered and created opportunities for discussion around:

• Food systems, Indigenous Food Sovereignty and self-determination with Indigenous perspectives on food and nutrition.
• The connection between Indigenous Food Sovereignty and the reclamation of culture and identity.
• The health and well-being effects of Indigenous Food Sovereignty.
• Ideas for incorporating traditional foods into programming through healthy meal recipes, games and activity ideas.

Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, our commitment to community partners remains the same: to ensure children and youth have access to positive opportunities to play and learn. The challenges posed by social distancing have been met with great creativity by CMs, and this session was added to the Remote Training schedule for CMs to:

• Share and learn about resources and strategies for facilitating modified child & youth programming during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Build their arsenal of play-based online and offline methods of engaging program participants, including a COVID 19 Indigenous Coalition Content Library hosted by The Rumie Initiative.

The Rumie Resource Library is created by a collective of organizations and led by The Rumie Initiative. It includes: N'we Jinan, Kids Help Phone, Think Indigenous, The Thunderbird Project, First Nations Caring Society, We Matter, True North Aid, The Centre for Suicide Prevention, Jack.org, Live Different and Right To Play. It includes resources and activities free to access by children, youth, families and Right To Play Community Mentors.

This training encouraged participants to explore:

• What holistic health and wellness looks like for them and their communities.
• Their own personal wellness strategies and how understanding these can support youth in creating wellness toolboxes.
• How to facilitate innovative health and wellness content for youth ion their community.