For the past few years, Thorsten Gohl, who lives in Zhatıé Kų́ę́ (Fort Providence), NT, has been enrolled in the Recreation North Training Program. He completed 19 Learning Events in that time. In May 2022, Thorsten graduated with a Certificate in Northern Recreation Management, having already completed his Certificate in Northern Recreation Leadership. Below, Thorsten shares some of his thoughts on the Program.
“I’m a Physical Literacy Coordinator who brings programming into communities. I love photography and I’m heavily involved in sport in the NWT, especially tennis, table tennis and hockey. I’m a tennis instructor, I promote table tennis– a lot!– and have just joined the board for hockey NWT.
The learning events that make up the Certificate in Northern Recreation Management were a level up from the Certificate in Northern Recreation Leadership. The 4-week ones were harder, but having flexible deadlines helped. You have to be engaged, and that was something I liked. For me, it was good to have more homework to do. Having many little activities to do suited my style of learning, but COVID and other tasks did make it more challenging this year.
Through this training, I found a lot of content that can be used for my work, so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel over and over again when doing my job. I loved the ‘Finding and Keeping Volunteers’ learning event (SV 101); it was perfect timing for me as took place during volunteer week.
The trainer, Caroline, was awesome! She does amazing work, especially how she runs the sessions. She listens well and rephrases the words I say into beautiful, clear language. I really looked forward to the conference calls and learning events; Caroline definitely wants to make sure everyone succeeds.
Something else I liked was the buildup and the topics getting more challenging as the training went on. I also liked that I could keep an idea that could start as a proposal and then carry that on through to the next learning event on evaluation.”