Our Overview
Hope and Health maximizes the power of sport to engage, educate, and empower Indigenous children and youth to improve long term health and life outcomes.
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Dive into the Hope and Health 2023 Impact Report to discover the collective achievements and profound effects of our initiatives over the past year. The report is a tribute to the collaborative spirit of our dedicated partners, benefactors, and dream team, whose tireless contributions have significantly advanced our mission.
Current and ongoing initiatives:
Be the Change Mini-Pitch Initiative
“I love how happy the children are when we leave. I hear the children talking about Hope and Health event even weeks after the community camp. They have so much fun and it definitely lifts their spirits. Hope and Health brings so much joy into the children’s lives.
Hope and Health offers a powerful message of inclusion and hope to aboriginal children and they just drink it in...”
At Hope and Health, the events we direct and facilitate are not merely feel-good interactions. In Canada, we have a long history of interfacing with the First Nations with often misguided and either malicious or inadvertent discriminatory practices.
Scientific systematic reviews confirm that caring support from non-parental adults from within a child or youth’s community enhances resiliency and lowers risk factors linked to negative outcomes in life (high-risk sexual and drug-using behaviours, suicidality, self-harm, and chronic illness). 1, 2 And these studies suggest that for children and youth in care, both natural and formal mentoring exposures have distinct benefits and challenges.
Hope and Health creates natural mentoring exposures wherein the children and youth will connect with non-parental adults within their Indigenous community, as well as those within the professional sport community (i.e. the Whitecaps FC, Pacific FC, VIU Mariners and UBC Thunderbirds etc.) and within the further community of Hope and Health directors and volunteers.
Hope and Health is a community-driven partnership. Our organization functions as a purposeful intermediary and catalyst seeking to support the goals of our vibrant Indigenous communities. We are deeply honoured to have such an opportunity to partner with Indigenous communities in British Columbia, Canada and play a significant role in mentoring their leaders of tomorrow.
1. Wolkow KE, Ferguson HB. Community factors in the development of resiliency: Considerations and future directions. Community mental health journal. 2001 Dec 1;37(6):489-98.
2. Ahrens KR, DuBois DL, Garrison M, Spencer R, Richardson LP, Lozano P. Qualitative exploration of relationships with important non-parental adults in the lives of youth in foster care. Children and youth services review. 2011 Jun 30;33(6):1012-23.