We are pleased to announce the Eastern Door Centre team are the recipients of this year’s Claudette Bradshaw FASD Innovation Award. The Eastern Door Centre is an Indigenous centre for assessment, intervention and prevention.
About the Eastern Door Centre
The organization provides long-term support and advocacy for youth and young adults up to the age of 21. This support continues until they finish their schooling if they go to college. They work to include youth voices in the diagnostic process using the Medicine Wheel Difference Game Cards for youth. It provides an opportunity for youth to talk about their challenges. It also offers an opportunity for the team to understand their perspective. Including youth voices in the case-planning process post diagnosis helps them with self-esteem and their sense of agency and possibility. The youth pack of the Medicine Wheel Difference Game allows the youth to set their own goals. They then work on them and are given the support they need to accomplish them.
Additionally, the Eastern Door Centre works to develop cultural and community pride by connecting youth living with FASD with Elders. They promote the Elder-Youth relationship by creating opportunities for youth to help Elders and also have fun. This could be working as a team to shovel snow for Elders in the winter. It could also be cooking and then serving them at a community feast.
The organization provides crisis outreach to support older youth with FASD who are homeless and couch surfing. The Eastern Door Centre helps them find housing and connect to services that can help them find shelter, employment or schooling. They also assist youth with mental health issues to get the health services they need as well as the mentoring or support they need to pick up and take prescribed medication.
Their Nogemag Healing Lodge provides a safe place for older youth and young adults to come at all times to participate in a ‘family’ like atmosphere of healing on the land learning traditional skills. Its leadership program has also helped many of the Eastern Door Centre youth to work their way through their low self-esteem and difficulties with relationships into healthy adulthood.
Congratulations!
These are just some examples of the remarkable initiatives that the Eastern Door Centre is doing for their community. Learn more about their work by checking out their website. Congratulations to the Eastern Door for winning this year’s Claudette Bradshaw award and thank you for all the incredible work you do in supporting the youth of New Brunswick.