The Ayalik Expeditions program seeks to foster new levels of self-confidence in our youth. The photo above says it all: these boys have achieved new heights beyond their imagination. We firmly believe that challenging activity – physically, socially, and emotionally challenging – most especially in the wilderness, serves to build confidence and self-esteem. Accordingly, we have sent youth to many different programs over the years. We continue in that vein, and are always looking out for new possibilities, but at this time we have settled on four distinct core Expedition programs. For more specific information and photos, click on the logos below. In our very first year, just a few months after inception, the Ayalik Fund sent two youths to an Outward Bound program in the Rockies. Ian Kavanna and Shania Angohiatok were 16 at the time, in 2015, recipients of the Ayalik Fund’s first grants. They still speak, with pride, about their achievement that summer – they joined a group of other youth from across Canada, and trekked into the high country near Banff, Alberta, carrying all the gear and food on their backs, learning to work together and to meet some personal challenges, as they broadened their horizons and developed new levels of self-confidence. Afterward, Ian wrote us a short note:

Since then, the Ayalik Expeditions program has sent many more youths on similar trips every year. In total, now, hundreds of youths from Nunavut have climbed mountains, canoed on Great Slave Lake and northern rivers as well as in Algonquin, Temagami and Kipawa, sea-kayaked in Clayoquot Sound, sailed in a tall-ship in the Great Lakes and around Newfoundland, learned traditional skills, sometimes winter camping and sometimes swimming in warm summer lakes, explored potential careers and new frontiers, always making new friends and discovering new strengths within themselves.