SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - This fall, a program at St. Patrick's high school will aim to help at-risk youth learn leadership and relationship skills they may not have had the opportunity to develop.

Yellowknife Catholic Schools (YCS) also hopes to have the kindergarten to Grade 9 version of the program off the ground by the new year, but is still in the process of hiring a program developer to help adapt the program to those lower grades.

The federal government provided $7.1 million in funding for the program over five years, as part of a $9.3 million set of programs that centre around crime prevention in the NWT.

"The money is to get the program off its feet and then in five years we aim to be self-sufficient," said Dianne Lafferty, the aboriginal education co-ordinator for YCS and the program facilitator for this project, which is officially called Do Edaeze: YCS Leadership and Resiliency Program (LRP).

LRP was originally pitched under the title Do Edaeze - which roughly translates to "a capable person on the land" - but was combined with the Youth and Resiliency Program model, which is a program for at-risk youth that has proven to be effective across Canada.

Lafferty said that the program will teach students strategies to deal with negative influences on their lives and try to prevent those influences from affecting their futures.

The LRP aims to develop coping strategies, leadership and relationship skills with the help of mentors in a classroom setting, and also through trips out on the land to learn about Dene culture.

"For the most part, the mentors will be teachers, but we are also looking at mentorship outside the school," said Lafferty, who said the outside of school mentors could be community members or elders.

The mentors will help the youth with coping strategies, with academics, and also may act as a liaison between the school and the parents of the student.

Youth will also get outside and do things like go canoeing and learn on-the-land skills.

"Kids from families who may not be able to afford to involve their kids in sports and other leadership building activities will have opportunities to do those sorts of things through this program," said Lafferty.

Once the kindergarten to Grade 9 program is off the ground, the LRP's curriculum will evolve as the student goes up in grade.

"We'll be dealing mostly with family issues at the lower ages, and then in high school we will cover more societal issues," said Lafferty.

Lafferty said YCS is working with the Department of Education to make the high school program into a three-credit course. The class will take place three times a week.

Students have the final choice on whether or not they want to take the program, but teachers may find students who they think would benefit from it and recommend it to them, and parents may opt to have their child in it as well.