Rising Rivers project – Call for First Nations volunteer ambassadors

The following message has been forwarded to me by Barbara Spyropoulos, on whose mailing list I am following my involvement, which was of a minor nature, with the Étienne Brûlé/Wendat project.

Barbara Spyropoulos
CPLC 12 Division
Toronto Police Service
200 Trethewey Drive
Toronto ON M6M 5E6
Tel: (416) 808-1068
Fax: (416) 808-1002
spyro12d@gmail.com

The message refers to two PDF documents:

Overview of the Rivers Rising Project

Rivers Rising_Ambassador recruitment flyer

———- Forwarded message ———-

From: Orville Wallace <OWallace@otf.ca>
Date: 17 September 2015 at 10:31
Subject: FW: Recruiting Aboriginal ​​ambassadors for Rivers Rising Project

Orville

FYI

From: Ushnish Sengupta [mailto:ushnish.sengupta@gmail.com]

Subject: Fwd: Recruiting Aboriginal ​​ambassadors for Rivers Rising Project

Hi Orville

We would be grateful if you could forward the following announcement recruiting Ambassadors for the Rivers Rising project to your mailing list.

Main Contact:

Paula Messina
Toronto Green Community

paula@torontogreen.ca
http://torontogreen.ca

______________________________________________________________​

Recruiting Aboriginal & Newcomer Ambassadors for Rivers Rising Project

​Hello,

I am contacting you regarding a special volunteer opportunity with our new project, Rivers Rising, that some of your participants may be interested in.

Rivers Rising is a community engagement collaborative project of the Toronto Green Community’s Lost Rivers program, the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto’s First Story program, and the Toronto Community Garden Network. The project will take place over the course of three years using storytelling about food, water and culture (newcomer and Indigenous) as the thread to connect people with each other and with the *blue green city.

We will be recruiting up to 20 Ambassadors who are interested in taking a leadership role in the project and helping us to identify place-based stories from their neighbourhoods. We will provide these ambassadors with hands-on training which will include key elements of digital storytelling, cultural competency, engaging with the public, how to lead walking tours and background about local lost rivers and local Indigenous culture and heritage. There will be approximately 8 training sessions beginning in mid-September. Ambassadors will receive an honorarium upon completion of the program.

We would appreciate your support in promoting the project and recruiting motivated individuals who would be interested in participating and/or becoming an Ambassador. We are specifically targeting newcomers/recent immigrants and the Aboriginal community in Toronto for the Ambassador role as well as volunteers who would like to share their stories with the ambassadors. The communities we plan to focus on during Year 1 of the project are Yonge-Eglinton, Rockcliffe-Smythe and/or Highland Creek dependent on response from each community.

There are two longer term objectives of the project: one is to create blue-green infrastructure projects through community participation to help create ‘green communities’ across the city; the other is to develop an eco-tourism social enterprise with an accompanying interactive app for self-guided tours.​

I have attached an overview of the project along with a flyer that can be shared with your clients/participants. Feel free to contact me with any questions or for further information with regard to the benefits and criteria of the Ambassador role.

Thank you,

Paula Messina
Toronto Green Community

paula@torontogreen.ca
http://torontogreen.ca

*Blue–Green Cities aim to recreate a naturally oriented water cycle while contributing to the amenity of the city by bringing water management and green infrastructure together.