By: Christina Torrealba (she/her), Graduate Student in Community Health and Epidemiology
Service Learning student Nathalee Ewers has been working with Imhotep’s Legacy Academy (ILA), a university-community partnership that uniquely mobilizes post-secondary students, faculty and community leaders to help improve student success and bridge the achievement gap for students of African heritage in Nova Scotia in grades 7-12.
Back in November 2021, Nathalee and ILA hosted the BIPOC Climbing event. In Nathalee’s words, “the purpose of this project is to increase accessibility of traditionally outdoor sports such as rock climbing in the BIPOC community and encourage STEM education through applied science”.
Students participating in the BIPOC Climbing Event in November, 2021.
In collaboration with ILA, Promoting Leadership in Health for African Nova Scotians (PLANS), and Indigenous Health in Medicine (IHIM), Nathalee is organizing 4-hour sessions of rock climbing and hands-on, applied physics lessons for junior high students. Nathalee and the team apply a variety of recruitment strategies to engage BIPOC youth from different school boards across Nova Scotia. Nathalee says she hopes to “find ways to provide the youth with continued access to these resources, and to eventually pair this initiative with exposure to other accessible outdoor activities such as hiking”.
Check-out the DalMed Service Learning Facebook page to see the next Community-Engaged Experience Spotlight, and learn more about ILA here.
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