John Ware Youth Empowerment Program to develop visible minority youth’s life and career skills

Common wisdom states it takes a village to raise a child, and the Global Village Centre (GVC) in Brooks is looking to prove this sentiment with their John Ware Youth Empowerment Program pilot. With recent investment of $144,600 by the Alberta government, the Global Village Centre is seeking to honour the legacy of John Ware, a black rancher who settled in Brooks, by helping newcomer and visible minority youth develop life and career skills through mentorship and support. The program was first brought forward back in 2020, when Premier Jason Kenney, Brooks-Medicine Hat MLA Michaela Frey, and GVC Executive Director Ahmed Kassem pitched the program as a way to help bring newcomer youth into the fold, said Frey. “The Premier and I both thought this was an awesome idea. And if you know Ahmed, you know that if there’s anybody who will get it done, it’s him,” said Frey. “I was so confident in his abilities that I pushed forward with the Premier’s office and the ministry to see if we could possibly fund this for him. And it resulted in $144,000 being allotted for the John Ware Youth Empowerment program.” The funding is preliminary, and after two years, the program will be reviewed based on how the current 60 youth that will go through it have done. Kassem said that currently, they have had approximately 95 youth come forward with interest in being part of the program, with more scheduled to come through soon. They plan to select 20 youth for their first cohort. “This funding has come at a time when the need for support of this kind for young adults is greater than ever, because it’s a huge investment. Helping those tools to find the path of success in their lives, and it’s a win-win situation and we are very reasonably happy and proud and honoured for the province funding of this program,” said Kassem. Support has also come in the form of many local business owners, who have stepped up and offered to serve as inspiration for youth in the program, but also as direct mentors, to help these young adults find their career goals. “We have executives from the JPS plant, which is the largest beef plant in North America. They step out of the blade, they say please sign us to mentor youth,” said Kassem. “We have a good number of immigrants in Brooks who are professional, who have a successful profession, or very successful in business. We invited them to step up on the plate and help with their own, and they signed up in huge numbers of professional immigrants and business people. People who own businesses in books, such as Shoppers Drug Mart, in Brooks, and other businesses in Brooks, they stepped up to the plate.” The youth will be taught about the legacy of Ware, as well as many skills needed for self sufficiency and resiliency, from business skills to simple tasks like cooking for themselves. Many of the youth who have come forward and applied for the program have dreams of one day owning a restaurant or working in a commercial kitchen, said Kassem, and they have had a local restaurant owner come forward to help facilitate mentoring these youth. “Our mentors are a variety of different mentors, and we asked the young adults, if they want a business person, we connected them with a businessman or businesswoman to show them what that will be like,” said Kassem. If they want to be a teacher. We have teachers and principals who will step up to the plate who will help them. If they want to be in a trade, and some of them want to be mechanics or electricians, we will connect them with the right people who will mentor them.” In addition to helping these youth, Kassem has also incorporated a “train the trainer” aspect, allowing other organizations across the province to come and learn about Ware’s legacy and pick up tools needed to create similar programs tailored to the needs of their communities. “Rural mentorship programs are not super common in Alberta. And so I think that a program like this is really kind of a North Star, for other organizations who are looking to get involved,” said Frey. “So when Ahmed had told me that they will actually be providing opportunities for other organizations in the province to learn from what they’re doing. So this project could actually support rural economic development and community well being in efforts, far more than just in Brooks, so I think that this has the ability to be very impactful.”