For the past two years, Kayleen Alexie, from Inuvik, NT, has been enrolled in the Recreation North Training Program. She completed 20 Learning Events in that time. In May 2021, Kayleen graduated with a Certificate in Northern Recreation Management, having already completed her Certificate in Northern Recreation Leadership. Below, Kayleen shared some of her thoughts on the Program.
My name is Kayleen Alexie. I’m from Inuvik, NT, which is also where I currently live. Right now, I am a full-time student working on 2 diplomas. Before going back to school full-time in December, however, I was employed by the Town of Hay River as the Customer Service Clerk at the Don Stewart Recreation Centre. During my six years in this role, I gained a lot of experience in recreation and I knew that taking the Rec North Training program would benefit me in my job. Even though I decided to follow a different path, I still learned a lot from the Learning Events.
My experience with the Management Certificate program was very positive. All of the advanced Learning Events are very hands on and I found them very helpful. The Learning Events gave us experience in proposal writing, understanding legal risk, financial reports, and evaluations. I appreciated these harder Learning Events because they gave us a better understanding of how to put these reports together and what information was needed – setting us up for success in the future. The learning events that took place over four weeks were a little intimidating, but our trainer Caroline set up Zoom meetings to walk us through everything and answer any questions that we might have. Caroline was also very responsive when I asked questions by email.
One highlight for me was putting together a proposal and a financial report for a program that was 100% made up. It was challenging but it was so worth it!