Mariners learn life skills
Kisarvik pilot project helps students find a 'safe place to anchor'
Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services
Monday, October 31, 2016
IQALUIT
A new pilot project is starting up Nov. 14 through the Nunavut Fisheries and Marine Training Consortium's school, thanks to a contribution agreement with the Department of Family Services.
"Basically we're taking our seven weeks of initial training that we do with our regular students to get them the minimum requirements to go work at sea and we're building into that five weeks of integrated essential skills," said co-ordinating instructor Capt. Randy Pittman.
Commonly called life skills, these include literacy, numeracy, problem-solving, form-filling, budgeting and banking, and resume-writing.
Twelve students will take part in the 12-week pilot and, if it's a success, Pittman hopes he can offer it once or twice a year.
"It's called the Kisarvik Project," said Pittman, who found the Inuktitut term by searching on the Internet.
"I went to the ladies up at the Arctic College, the Inuit Studies ladies. I asked them, 'What do you think of this word? This word? This word?' When they heard kisarvik, they said I didn't have to look anymore. 'That's the word,' they said. It means safe place to anchor, save haven, good bottom, good foundation."
Pittman says instructors always offered basic life skills instruction, but not formally. There just wasn't the money to extend programs beyond what Transport Canada requires for the many certificates students gain.
"This gives us the time to do the things we wished we had the time to spend on. But part of the success of the program is we always tried to push these values, offering that social side, but now having the funding to do it is very exciting."
Executive director Elizabeth Cayen is equally thrilled, not the least because the partnership demonstrates that the training offered by the consortium is recognized as successful.
With offerings that range from pre-training and pre-sea to fishing masters, the accredited and certificate-granting school sees 92 to 95 per cent completion rates, said Cayen.
Completion rates are charted by course completed - a student who completes two courses is counted as two course participants.
"We do that so we get real completion rates on courses because that's really important as an evaluation tool to make sure the courses are meeting the students' needs," she said.
Every year the school puts through between 250 and 320 "course participants." From the 92 to 95 per cent completion rates across the board, "70 per cent (of the school's students) who complete go to work somewhere," Cayen said, noting about 60 per cent end up in the marine industry.
Looking at fishing boat crew lists, she remembers five years ago.
"If we had four guys on the boat that would be good."
Now there can be up to 15 former students on those crew lists.
"Every trip it's getting more and more. And more guys are staying in the industry, which is also super-important. When I started eight years ago it was not unusual for a guy to do one trip and that was it, he never went back. Now we have more guys staying in the industry," said Cayen.
"They see a career. They see a real career."
She shares some figures every dollar spent on training results in $7 to $9 in savings in other systems, such as health care and criminal justice.
"Most are not high school graduates, many have been in trouble with the law, many come from not very nice backgrounds - all the stuff that happens in the North," she said. "And they live in remote communities. Where are you going to find a job that makes $100,000 to $150,000? Especially with limited education and skills."
But the consortium doesn't want these men to miss out.
"For me, personally, that's what keeps me working. Seeing that success and watching them come into the classroom generally very shy, no self-confidence - and they change."
