BANFF – Newcomer students to the Bow Valley participated in the Newcomer Orientation Welcome (NOW) Program and on Friday (Aug. 23), they celebrated the program’s completion with a graduation ceremony.
The NOW Program is a dedicated program from Bow Valley Settlement Services that help newcomers and immigrant students from Grade 7 to Grade 12 adjust to the Canadian school system. Even more so, the program helps Bow Valley students develop leadership skills.
“We’re really proud of the kids and that ability to share as well and ultimately these kids now will step into school, will be more successful because they understand what the expectations are going to be,” said Settlement Services supervisor, Jeanie Godfrey.
As the NOW Program prepares immigrant students for high school, it also creates a community of relationships to ease the transition for adolescents.
“They feel more comfortable, they’ve got friends and they know that there’s a network of kids that are out there to support them if they have questions and challenges,” said Godfrey.
Taking place in the last two weeks of August and NOW is divided into two parts, peer leader training and newcomer orientation.
For the first week of the program, Settlement Services taught immigrant students who have already settled in the Bow Valley to become peer leaders. Then in the second week, the peer leaders take charge and run the newcomer orientation portion.
“As the Settlement team, we’re just guiding those kids to lead the program, but the peer leaders are the stars of the program. They are the ones that have talked about their personal experiences and shared their own personal stories of what it was like for them to be newcomers and what they felt on those first few days and first few weeks and months at school.”
With the most recent orientation program, the group was made up of 35 students with 11 newcomer students and 24 peer leaders.
For Mickaela Unite, this is her second time as a peer leader. Throughout the peer leader training she said they talked about what it’s like to be a newcomer.
“It’s just ice breakers for the first couple days and then we talked about how the newcomers feel, how much anxiety and how hard it would be to adjust to the new routines,” Unite said.
As some immigrant students are arriving after the NOW program, Godfrey said that they will be welcomed individually and paired with a peer leader when they arrive. While the NOW Program is more focused on youth, Settlement Services offers programming for adults as well.
“Our goal is to help people learn more about the community, understand the resources available to them so they can settle in the best way possible and we really want to see their strengths come out as soon as possible. We’re going to benefit as a community when we do that so our programming is aimed at all ages,” Godfrey said.
