A Calgary-based initiative that wants to help create more opportunities for Indigenous post-secondary students to enter the job market has received the financial lift it needed to get off the ground.
The Influence Mentoring Society announced Tuesday that actors Blake Lively and her husband, Vancouver-born Ryan Reynolds, had donated $250,000 to help launch the online project that will be open to Indigenous post-secondary students across Canada.
Influence Mentoring Society is excited to announce a generous donation of $250,000 from actors and philanthropists @vancityreynolds and @BlakeLively, which allows us to launch the Influence Mentoring Program. Learn more.
*https://t.co/GC84ZgLNIS
*#superheroes #mentoring pic.twitter.com/Ehb6wkPQPg— info (@influencementor) March 2, 2021
The initiative will match students with a suitable mentor in a student’s field of studies.
Influence Mentoring Society Chair Colby Delorme says the aim is to fill the education and employment gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians.
“Eliminating these gaps and ultimately increasing Indigenous representation in the private sector, including in management and executive positions, should be a shared journey,” Delorme said in a news release.
“This speaks not only to having the resources available to support Indigenous youth, but also is a signal of true reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians.”
Delorme said the initiative is very much guided by The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada’s Calls to Action, which address the need to eliminate the educational and employment gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians.
Colby Delorme is chair of Influence Mentoring Society. (twitter.com)
“We are so happy to support the Influence Mentoring program that will help Indigenous youth in Canada, who are trying to successfully complete their post-secondary pursuits and enter the job market for the first time,” Reynolds said.
“All too often, diverse groups are left behind in the things we take for granted.
“This program aims to rectify that imbalance.”
According to a report by CBC News, “Lively and Reynolds have spent much of the past year in philanthropic pursuits. The couple donated $1 million to food non-profits Feeding America and Food Banks Canada at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, and followed that up with another donation of the same size in February of this year.”
The report says Lively and Reynolds similarly donated $200,000 to an institute at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia to help promote Indigenous women’s leadership last June 20, and in November donated $250,000 to Covenant House Toronto and the same amount to Covenant House Vancouver.
Last September, Reynolds launched the Group Effort Initiative, aimed at getting more Black, Indigenous and people of colour working on film sets.
Pictured are two of the children in Nunavut who attend Inuujaq School who received Canada Goose parkas, boots, mitts and other winter wear donated by Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds last fall. (Adrianne Mike-Qaunnaq)
He also donated more than 300 brand new parkas from Canada Goose, as well as Baffin boots, socks, hats and mitts to children in Nunavut after reading a tweet by Inuk singer-songwriter Becky Han that the children were short of school supplies.
Han told the CBC’s Juanita Taylor she thinks Reynolds saw the tweet from someone else who retweeted it.
“So he reached out and said, ‘I saw the tweets and how can I help?'” she said.
With files from CBC News (Juanita Taylor)
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