TakingITGlobal

C O N N E C T E D N O R T H : A J O U R N E Y O F T R A N S F O R M AT I O N & W E L L- B E I N G 4 1. Preamble Author's Introduction This paper is organized in a manner that illustrates the key theories, models, and methods that inform the evaluation and ongoing development of the Connected North program managed by TakingITGlobal, a charitable organization based in Toronto that I have had the pleasure of collaborating with over the years. The TakingITGlobal team and I have known each other for twenty years, having met when I was working at the University of Toronto with the TeenNet Project (which would later become the Youth Voices Research Unit). Our shared interests in using technology to engage and support youth learning, health and Well-Being allowed us to collaborate on many projects over the years. The lens I bring to this project is informed greatly by the collaborations and the work I did training as a community psychologist. My studies included work with Indigenous helpers from different traditions and community healing practices to inform health and Well-Being promotion. The opportunity to learn from healers such as Eber and Mary Hampton, Paul Antrobus, and Richard Katz shaped how I approached psychology and community work. It involved looking at healing – the process of recovery, growth, and learning – as part of creating and maintaining connections, not some 'procedure' or solitary process for individuals, but of community. As part of this journey I spent two years as a secondary special education resource instructor where I worked closely with youth who had experienced trauma, learning difficulties, social exclusion, and oen used the (then new) Internet to solve their problems. This was at a time when Google, Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube didn't exist. Seeing what these burgeoning technologies could do changed the course of my career. It was an interest in exploring the potential to engage people in health promotion using new technology to bridge geographic and social distances that drew me to working with Dr. Harvey Skinner (the founder of TeenNet) at the University of Toronto where I studied public health. Together, we looked at ways to create, maintain, and evaluate the role that new technologies could play in supporting change-making, youth leadership, and health promotion. Aer leaving the U of T to do post-doctoral training in complexity science and health, I returned to the U of T and transformed TeenNet into the Youth Voices Research Group, which worked extensively with TakingITGlobal on strategies using methods like Photovoice as a participatory means of documenting youth experience. Connected North represents an opportunity to come full circle by working on a project aimed at engaging Indigenous youth using technology to support learning, health, and Well-Being with TakingITGlobal.

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