Arctic Bay (Oct 30/06) - In some circles, Peter Tatauapik might be considered a double agent.

But in his case, he's working for two groups that want to achieve a common cause: a friendship centre for the youth of Arctic Bay.

Tatauapik works with Nunavut Youth Consulting (NYC) and the Qikiqtani Inuit Association's youth committee, Makkuktunait. The 23-year-old Tatauapik has been with NYC since its inception, with a little break nearly seven years ago.

Members of both groups volunteer to help their communities. With limited recreation opportunities for youth in Baffin Island's most northerly hamlet of Arctic Bay, NYC and Makkuktunait have joined forces to raise money for the project.

That process is slow going. Tatauapik says a youth friendship centre is needed "badly."

"There's not much to do in town, this town is little," he said. "Hopefully there are going to be games to kill the boredom."

Tatauapik's day job sees him supervising Arctic Bay's community Internet access program (CAP), a project run by the youth consultants.

"It's different from one time to another," he said. "Sometimes it's helping with the Internet and sometimes it's to help (users) get started with computers."

The CAP site's media equipment has spawned a boom in music among the youth of the hamlet.

Tatauapik's weapon of choice is the software program Garage Band, which lets users remix music on their home computer. With help from the computer program, he remixes songs by some of his favourite rappers like Biggie Smalls, Easy E and Tupac Shakur. But it's a learning process, he said.

"It gets kind of complicated."