The three Niagara dailies (St. Catharines Standard, Niagara Falls Review and Welland Tribune) announced that an NC Indigenous Student Success Leader has received a $500,000 award from the Embark Student Foundation Major Grant Program.
The grant application had no set criteria, no formula for what it needed to be. So staff with Niagara College’s Indigenous Student Success Leader started dreaming big. They wanted to ensure Indigenous students are addressed in a way that is authentic to their needs, both financially and educationally and wanted to hire a learning strategist and an employment strategist, and, possibly, have a branded vehicle.
Associate Director of Indigenous Education, Leah Hogan said she can’t express how excited staff were when they got news the college had been awarded $500,000: “We are still just beaming of the fact that it’s just so many possibilities with this grant. It felt very validating in that our vision spoke to the funders (for) them to believe in the work that we do. The fact that we were chosen really gave us…the confidence to know that we’re on the right path, we’re doing the right thing.”
NC is one of seven post-secondary institutions from across Canada named as inaugural recipients of the Embark grant program, which is awarding millions of dollars over the next five years to support innovative programs, services and initiatives.
Read the March 21 St. Catharines Standard article here.
