Throughout the month of March, the Dehcho First Nations Health and Wellness Division will be hosting a series of virtual workshops in an effort to inform new and expecting parents about the various facets of pregnancy, and where they can go for help.
These workshops will be held every Wednesday at 11am, and will share information and resources relating to different topics regarding pregnancy. It is not only open to people in the Dehcho region, but to everyone across the Territory as well.
The four sessions will discuss:
Lactation Support with Rachel MacNiell,
Healthy Family Programming with Megan Okrainec,
Northern Birthworker Collective with Jenna Blanchard, and
An overview of the Hay River Midwifery Program
Dehga Scott, a representative of the Dehcho Health and Wellness Division who will be hosting some of these sessions, shared some more details on this project and why it was created.
“The Dehcho Health and Wellness Division has been working hard on developing a resource binder to show and understand that our communities are lacking resources, lacking connection, and lacking programming that are not always necessarily available in the smaller communities, so we wanted to bring people or organizations to the Dehcho region online so our community members would have access to these resources, and be able to understand what is available outside of these communities, so that when they do have to leave, they know where to turn to.”
Scott added that the longer goals of this project are to try and make sure that resources and information on pregnancy can have a stronger physical presence in communities across the North. She also shared that if the demand and interest in this program becomes high enough, the Dehcho Health and Wellness Division will do what they can to bring it back later down the line, and will try to incorporate some more traditional and on the land teachings that align with Indigenous teachings.
Registration for these workshop sessions can be done on the Dehcho First Nations Health & Wellness Division Facebook Page, or by reaching out to Dehga Scott at 867-446-5942.
