Looking to acquire skills and confidence running recreation programs in a Northern community? Have a busy schedule with work and family commitments? Check out Recreation North’s Leadership Training Program. Participants can work towards a Certificate or sign up for individual Learning Events depending on their needs.
For the past few years, Thorsten Gohl, who lives in Zhatıé Kų́ę́ (Fort Providence), NT, has been enrolled in the Recreation North Training Program. He completed 20 Learning Events in that time. In May 2022, Thorsten graduated with a Certificate in Northern Recreation Management, having already completed his Certificate in Northern Recreation Leadership. Below, Thorsten shared some of his thoughts on the Program.
“I’m a physical literacy coordinator supporting bringing programming into communities. I love photography and I’m heavily involved in sport in the NWT, especially tennis, table tennis and hockey. I’m a tennis instructor, I promote table tennis-- a lot!-- and have just joined the board for hockey NWT.
The learning events in the Certificate in Northern Recreation Management were a level up from the Certificate in Northern Recreation Leadership. The 4-week courses were harder, but flexible deadlines helped. You have to be engaged, and that was something I liked. For me, it was good to have more homework to do. Having many little tasks to do suited my style of learning, but COVID and other tasks did make it more challenging this year.
Through these courses, I found a lot of content that can be used for my work, so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel over and over again when doing my job. I loved the ‘Finding and Keeping Volunteers’ learning event (SV 101). That course fit perfectly in as took place during volunteer week.
The Instructor, Caroline, was awesome! She does amazing work, especially how she runs the sessions. She listens well and rephrases the words I say into beautiful, clear language. I really looked forward to the sessions, Caroline definitely wants to make sure everyone succeeds.
Something else I liked was the buildup and the topics getting more challenging as the courses went on. I also liked that I could keep an idea that could start as a proposal that could carry on through a process to evaluation from course to course.”
The Recreation North Training Program is delivered through a tri-territorial partnership of the three recreation and parks associations. Visit recnorth.ca to learn more.
Recreation North is proud to be a 2015 Arctic Inspiration Prize laureate.