The Medicine River Wildlife Centre has been helping injured wild animals and running environmental education programs for over 10 years. Our experiences with these programs have led us to realize that the key to a healthy environment is a healthy community, defined by healthy people.

If we are to have healthy people and healthy communities, we must create bonds of respect between people and their natural environment. If these bonds are in place, it is likely that this respect will extend beyond our environment to the people within our communities.

The Outreach Programs at the Wildlife Centre are designed to reach some of those people who have been most badly injured, victims of abuse and addictions. Many of them are children.

If we are to have the healthy communities we all desire, we must reintegrate those who have harmed society, allowing them inside our community, not viewing life from behind a closed door.

THE GOAL

These Outreach Programs will focus mainly on young adults between the ages of 10 and 18. It is likely that these young people will have had some experience with abuse or addictions issues.

The primary factor that makes the current programs at the Wildlife Centre so effective is our use of live education animals to illustrate human-made problems in our natural environment. Extending this strength will allow us to create connections for children who likely have limited experience with our natural environment.

Through these programs we hope to create a sense of self-respect that will extend beyond those who hear our program into the community beyond.

By using wild animals to create respect for each other and the environment, we hope to create healthy people, a healthy community, a healthy environment.

THE PROGRAM

The Outreach Programs at the Wildlife Centre have three components:

First, many children and adults seek out the Wildlife Centre as a place where they can work off community hours or in lieu of money assigned by the Fine Option Program. Here, they gain the opportunity to develop life skills and self-confidence by caring for injured wild animals. This hands-on experience is valuable and gives these people an opportunity to build on existing skills or develop new ones.

The second component allows staff and volunteers of the Wildlife Centre the opportunity to interact with children in the community, through the young offender units and with other support agencies such as the Metis Association. Here we are able to form a connection and create the hope of a better future. It is in this setting that we make ourselves available as a lifeline for children who may have no where else to turn.

The final piece of our Outreach Programs is the networking with other people who have a stake in building healthy communities. Here, we can share what we know with schools, churches, and community groups encouraging them to become involved in programs that help build healthy communities. In addition, our recent interest in this area means we have much to learn and we are eager to hear from those who can teach.

THE COMMUNITY

For the Outreach Programs to be a success, we too must work from within our community. Although this community can be interpreted in the broadest sense as a global one, our obvious focus is on Alberta, most specifically the Central Alberta region surrounding Red Deer.

Within this local community, we work with a variety of professionals in fields such as Justice, Child Welfare, Addictions, Metis and First Nations. We believe that such a diverse group can only have a positive impact on our programs, strengthening them.

By building bridges to create healthy people, we in turn create healthy communities that exist inside a healthy environment.