Preparing Our Home: Indigenous Community Resilience Sharing Circles (February Circle)

“Preparing our Home” is a community-based resilience planning program that enables Indigenous youth to reach their potential in becoming emergency preparedness leaders in their communities. In this series of online workshops, Elders, community leaders and youth will come together to learn from each other and share their experiences in emergency management and community care.

Emergency Management Programming (Preparedness, Mitigation, Response and Recovery) can be developed in a way that meets any community’s unique needs and capacity for emergency preparedness. To ensure programming is relevant, practical, and effective, it is critical that communities lead this process. Communities and CMM’s Emergency Management team are passionate about changing the narrative of what emergency management is and instead, showing what it can be. Communities are expanding boundaries to encompass an increasingly holistic approach to emergency preparedness while combining various frameworks that support community values, knowledge, and emergency management best practices.

Join us for this session to learn about community-guided emergency management capacity building in the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq.

About the speakers:

Amber

Amber MacLean-Hawes is the Emergency Management Program Manager with the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq (CMM) and currently works with 8 Mi’kmaw communities in Mainland Nova Scotia. Amber started with CMM back in 2017, in the initial stages of a Climate Change and Health Adaptation project aimed to support communities’ emergency preparedness using a holistic approach through a climate and health lens. Since then, Amber has had the joy of seeing this project develop into a more comprehensive program which provides support and resources to increase overall community emergency management capacity and efforts. Amber attended Dalhousie University where she completed BSc Chemistry (2014) and a BSc Health Promotion Honours (2017) and has focused research and work experience in community health, underrepresented populations and systems impacted youth of colour.

Kasey

Kasey is an Emergency Management Planning Officer with the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq. They completed a bachelor’s of Kinesiology with a focus on health behavior adaptation in 2019 and in 2020 they completed an Advanced Diploma in Emergency Management. Kasey began working for the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq in 2020 and their role has been to work with the mainland Mi’kmaq communities in Nova Scotia to develop effective and proactive Emergency Management Programs and to support the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and other emergencies. This work has been focused on emergency response planning, community education and engagement, and capacity building through training and skill development.

Scott

Scott MacDonnell is an Emergency Mitigation Officer with the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq, from Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia. Coming to CMM with a background in climate change adaptation, Scott works with Mi’kmaq communities across Mainland Nova Scotia to help increase community capacity to mitigate and prepare for natural hazards and emergencies. Scott’s work currently centers primarily around wildfire awareness and preparedness. His roles include completing wildfire risk assessments, holding community engagement events, and arranging training for community members. Scott also assists communities with applied wildfire mitigation practices such as fuel removal and civic sign installation.

Alanna

Alanna Syliboy is a Mi’kmaq woman (E’pit) from Sipekne’katik First Nation. She has been with the CMM since 2014 and has worked on many various projects. She started as a Community Liaison Officer to help other staff gain connections in Mi’kmaq communities, as well as offered her insight, experience and knowledge as a Mi’kmaw person. In her current role as the Cultural, Education and Engagement Manager with the Department of Aquatic Resources and Fisheries Management, Alanna aims to blend her Mi’kmaw knowledge, traditions and language with modern scientific practices to lend a truly Two-Eyed Seeing (Etuaptmumk) approach to projects, workshops and engagement sessions. Alanna spends her time both in a professional and personal capacity continuing to educate herself on Mi’kmaq history, listening and learning from community Elders, and teaching others. She brings her knowledge with her in every aspect of her work, from field visits to national symposiums. She is a passionate advocate for her communities, and an integral part of the CMM’s inclusion of Mi’kmaw values and language into the CMM’s body of work.

*The session will take place through Zoom platform. Once registered, you will receive an event link and a calendar invite within a few days.

For more information please visit www.preparingourhome.ca and for any questions please email [email protected]