Northern Lights Collaborative

The Northern Lights Collaborative (NLC) is an Ontario Trillium Foundation Youth Opportunities Fund project that connects people across Ontario and Canada. Through means such as programming, events, and advocacy, the NLC empowers youth facing barriers to lead, advocate, and contribute their voices to their communities.

We work with youth and organizations across Northern Ontario to centre youth leadership, storytelling, decrease youth isolation, and increase organizational accountability to youth voices. Stay tuned as we share more stories about this work!

On this page:

New Shining Moon Online Workshop Series 2020

We are all settling into a new reality and want to help the people, organizations, and groups we are connected to thrive. We are always making history as young changemakers – in particular, a global pandemic is new territory for many of us in living memory. We believe we are well-positioned to respond with community care and have a lot of learning to offer our world as indigenous and racialized people and allies.

This event is sponsored by the Ontario Trillium Foundation Youth Opportunities Fund and brought to you by young people and organizations who support youth from Northern and Southern Ontario. This online workshop series was co-created with the Northern Lights Collaborative, Young Leaders Circle, CatalystsX and Koach Katrina.

Together with over 20 young-at-heart facilitators from across the country, we are hosting over 40 online workshops. Workshops begin April 6th, 2020 to April 30th, 2020!

These online experiential learning opportunities (aka workshops and presentations) are for young people from across Northern Turtle Island (Canada) who want to:

  • Connect with other young people;
  • develop their leadership and storytelling skills;
  • learn about self and community care in this time;
  • build relationships and;
  • make a change as leaders in their communities.

Check out our list of workshop facilitators below!

Northern Lights Collaborative Update

 

 

2017 Launch Event Harvest

We learned so much at the first Northern Lights Collaborative annual event. Thank you to Biigtigong Nishaabeg (Pic River First Nation) and Gchi Waaswaagaing for hosting us!

Check out the event harvest, full of pictures and insights shared by youth and other event participants.

CatalystsX’s Story in Northern Ontario

Since starting with a hub in New York in 2014, where a local young changemaker supported other social entrepreneurs with mentorship and workshops, we’ve enjoyed working with people making their communities better across Northern Ontario and the northern territory of Nishnawbe Aski Nation.

We received feedback from CoPilots(1) in 2016 from Northern Communities that they would like to see more of our workshops and programming in their communities directly. We then reached out to local organizations and changemakers to see how we could support their work.

We embarked on incredible collaborations (some featured below) and have also been awarded funding to continue for five years of work in communities. Stay tuned for more announcements about this!

Below are some of our collaborations, supporting many grassroots and other organizations and people who are strengthening their communities. We do not take credit for these programs and the work that has been done by local people and organizations, but we are proud to have directly supported the following:

  • Idea Labs with Youth Social Infrastructure Algoma Nest – bringing diverse people together to build ideas for their communities. One such Idea Lab ended up organizing a “Really, Really Free Market” where people brought in goods they no longer needed, and anyone could take the goods home for free.
  • Supporting grassroots youth group Youth Odena in supplies and materials such as t-shirts to build community among youth participants and volunteers
  • Social Enterprise 101, using business principles to solve community and social issues, in collaboration with Urban Indigenous Youth for Change and Social Enterprise Northern Ontario based out of Algoma University
  • Balancing Work and Play, self-care while changing the world in collaboration, with Urban Indigenous Youth for Change and Social Enterprise Northern Ontario
Northern Lights Collective - logo