HAY RIVER - A Hay River woman has started a brand new business to offer healing and educational workshops.

Audrey Berens, a social worker, has been establishing Northwind Consulting over the past several months.

Audrey Berens has launched a new business in Hay River - Northwind Consulting. (Paul Bickford/NNSL photo)

She said her goal is to offer service to aboriginal groups in the NWT.

Berens believes healing starts at home, noting she works with families as a unit, not as individuals.

Among other things, she uses the traditional medicine wheel as a basis to improve people's spiritual, emotional, physical and cultural well-being.

Berens likens some people's problems to a bicycle wheel wobbling because all the spokes are not in place.

"That's like a lot of our lives," she said. "We need to balance everything."

With her new home-based company, Berens will offer workshops on a variety of topics - healing, residential schools, team building, board training and addiction awareness.

In May, she sent out 73 letters to First Nations and Metis locals and some other aboriginal organizations to let them know what services she can offer.

She is now waiting for them to contact her with the kinds of workshops they want delivered in their communities.

"I need to be patient," she said, noting it's going to take time to develop her new business.

Berens, 50, has a Bachelor of Indian Social Work from Saskatchewan Indian Federated College, part of the University of Regina, where she also learned to speak and write the Cree language (the college is now called First Nations University.)

She has worked in many aspects of the social work field - as a child protection worker in Yellowknife, in home care for 10 communities in the Deh Cho, with the Fort Providence Residential School Society and at treatment centres, women's shelters, young offenders facilities and friendship centres. Most recently, she was a financial officer with the Hay River Metis Government Council.

Before becoming a social worker, Berens said she worked for minimum wage as a waitress to raise three now-grown children as a single parent.

She said she personally knows about the issues she will be offering workshops about.

"I have my own experiences with alcohol and drugs, the whole nine yards," she said. "As a single parent, I can understand what people are going through."

She also attended residential schools in Fort Simpson and Fort Smith for three years.

Berens said people in her line of work need honesty, integrity and respect for those needing help.

"You need to be unbiased and non-judgmental and most of all open-minded," she said.

She said she hopes to eventually hire subcontractors to help her deliver workshops, adding they will all have high levels of education and practical experience and be aboriginal people from the NWT.

Berens, who describes herself as a Cree-Metis, was born in Fort Smith, but has lived in Hay River for 48 years.

She said she gets a lot of satisfaction being a social worker, noting there is a sense of accomplishment from helping people.

Berens said she may also offer cross-cultural workshops for non-aboriginals in the future.

"If we want to get stronger, we have to work with one another," she said.