Youth reach out to youth through campaign

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The Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) Decade for Youth Council has launched a suicide prevention campaign urging troubled youth to ask for help in dealing with the problems they encounter in their lives.

Through the We Care Yellow Balloon campaign, the council will be working with NAN's Decade for Youth and Development department to get the message out. The Decade for Youth Council and Decade for Youth and Development program were created in 2002 as a way to try to deal with the suicide crisis within NAN communities.

Yellow is the international color for suicide prevention, so the color figures prominently in the campaign, which uses yellow balloons and posters with an Ask 4 Help message to raise awareness. Organizers hope to eventually add other items like yellow T-shirts or bracelets to the list of tools at their disposal.

The council members came up with the idea for the campaign as a way to do something following a tragic weekend during which two people in the same community committed suicide, said Catherine Cheechoo, a member of the council.

"We knew we wanted to do something where we could tell the youth it's OK to ask for help, that there are people out there that care about them. Because a lot of the time when somebody does attempt suicide it's because they feel like they have nobody to talk to or they just feel overwhelmed by that problem at that time. So this is just a way to hopefully tell the youth that there's other things that you can do besides hurting yourself," she said.

"We'd dealt with this crisis for so long and a lot of the members on the youth council have experienced suicide in their lives, either through loss of a family member or a friend or even in their community. We just feel like it's time that we need to start showing initiative in terms of dealing with the suicide crisis in our area. Helping out our own friends and our own youth."

Over the past three years there has been an average of 16 suicides per year within NAN territory. In 2005, 24 people within the territory took their own lives.

Organizers of the campaign are hoping communities will take an active role in helping to get the message out by organizing suicide awareness events at a local level.

"We really want to counteract this culture of suicide, they call it. This idea that young people think suicide is OK, like it is a choice. But we don't want it to ever be on the radar as a choice. That's what we're really trying to do is get this message out there that they should ask for help," said Melanie Goodchild Southwind, co-ordinator of Decade for Youth and Development.

The We Care Yellow Balloon campaign was launched during the Seven Sacred Teachings Youth Suicide Awareness Conference held in Thunder Bay from Jan. 31 to Feb. 3.

For more information on the We Care Yellow Balloon campaign, visit the Decade for Youth Web site at www.nandecade.ca or call the NAN offices at (807) 623-8228 and ask for the Decade for Youth program.