Colleges launch campaign to encourage aboriginals to embrace higher learning
April 17, 2011
Louise Brown
EDUCATION REPORTER
Ontario community colleges will launch a $400,000 awareness campaign Monday to encourage aboriginals to consider higher learning.
Touting the slogan “Break your Own Trail . . . with a college education,” designed by native advertising agency Spirit Creative, the campaign includes not only posters and newspaper and radio ads, but also flyers sent directly to the remote fly-in reserves where students begin to fall behind in school.
“A lot of them struggle with English and have financial problems and they can be a long way from home, but if I can do it, anyone can,” said Belinda Sayeau, a native from northern Ontario who graduated with a business diploma from Fanshawe College in London, Ont. where she now works in the office for First Nations students. Sayeau won the Colleges Ontario Award for Student Excellence this year.
Aboriginals are among the least likely groups to attend post-secondary education, although 26 per cent hold a college diploma and only 7 per cent have graduated from university.
Linda Franklin is president of Colleges Ontario, which represents the province’s 24 community colleges, and she said it is crucial to increase the education rate of under-represented groups such as aboriginals if Ontario hopes to address the looming labour shortage.
“We also want to make sure these under-represented groups achieve their full potential.”