Motivate Canada are engaged in a long term project with the local community to build sustainable programs that will directly improve the quality of life for all. Their team is headed up by the inspirational Kent Brown who is a coach and motivational specialist. IFTA coach Scott Haines said “I traveled 638 km that day but it was well worth it, Kent Brown has a lot of energy and it was a privilege to work with him.  He had tremendous rapport with those in attendance. He’s been working with the community every other month since 2006 and it showed because he knew everyone on a first name basis. I certainly picked up a few tips and for many of the activities he even had the parents running around which was a lot of fun.”

This was a second visit to Mine Centre for the IFTA team and now that the community has a Decathlon equipment kit, this means that they are able to monitor the progress and set achievement goals for all their students. For this session Scott and Kent organized some fun relays and then had the students complete Decathlon activities. For most of them this was the second time they had completed many of the events so they were able to compare the results with their previous performances.

Fitness monitoring is not the only purpose of this equipment, the 10 events cover a wide variety of skills that are useful in many sports and activities. This new kit ensures that Mine centre will be one of the first schools to participate in the remote communities’ competition that will be happening during the next few months.

Each community will compete on their home ground and compare results via the internet. This format has already been used by IFTA to facilitate remote competition with schools in Toronto competing simultaneously with schools across the Atlantic Ocean in Wales and England. The event was featured on a Nation-wide CBC broadcast and proved very exciting for the particpants. It will take time to fully develop the format that works best for the First Nation Communities but interest is such that it is a natural development of the program and it should help with some of the geographical challenges faced in these regions.

It was very encouraging to see the local parents taking an interest by offering support and assistance. The goal is to have a core group of instructors who are able to continue the program by organizing activities for their own communities.

A quick special thanks to both Scott and Kent for travelling to Mine Centre to make this event possible. Weather conditions can be difficult in the region and only 5 hours later it turned bad. The team stopped to assist at one a car accident with a Seine River family, everyone was ok, but if a car goes off the road there are many rocks and trees so it can be quite scary. 

For more information about Motivate please visit: www.motivatecanada.ca

IFTA are supported by The Ontario Ministry of Health Promotion Sport for More grant “Keeping First Nations First” which is delivered in partnership with Athletics Ontario