b'BUILDING BRIGHTER FUTURESWhat would you say to Indigenous studentsOn a more personal note: how long have who arent sure whether to apply? you been working with this program? We tell everybody that they should apply and thatIve been with Indspire since 2007, and in the bursa-there is money available. We are not like band fundingries and scholarships department since 2013. I was or post-secondary funding. Our minimum award isa bursaries and scholarships officer first, and then I $1,000 and our average award is about $2,600, andbecame the manager in 2019. those averages fluctuate from year to year.What do you love most about doing what What are some of the things that youyou do?commonly hear from students in terms ofI love working in this department for several reasons. why they apply? What are the reasons thatNumber one, it makes a difference in peoples they give in their letters? lives, and theyre very grateful for it. It is also very We dont necessarily hear why they are applying, butrewarding because its a way for me, personally, to we do hear why an award from Indspire means sogive back. Every day is something newevery applica-much to them. A couple of the things we commonlytion is different and the students circumstances are hear are that, obviously, they are grateful for the fundsall different, so every day is a different day where you because it relieves the stress in their lives, and that as aencounter different applications or documentation, result of receiving the funds, they might not have to getand its challenging that way. a second job to fund their education, for instance. A lotIndspire invested in a database a couple of years ago of times the students will say to us that its importantbecause our agreements are so diverse. Before that, to them to get an award from Indspire because Indspirewe were matching them on a spreadsheet, so that is an Indigenous organization, and this is an indicationevery time you came to a donor, you had to filter that it believes in them. They may get another award,them with the manual filtering process. Because but this means more to them because Indspire is anweve grown so much, we ended up matching 5,000 Indigenous-led charity. students on a spreadsheet. I worked with a contractor and told them what we were doing, and by working in What are some of the most popular fields ofphases, weve come to a point where we just create study that BBF applicants pursue?a query in the database, and that will result in a list of the applicants with the highest score and highest Our top 10 fields of study, in order, are health profes- need, based on the query criteria. Working with the sions and related programs with almost 1,200 awards,company in order to build that database was chal-business management and marketing with a little morelenging and working with them on an ongoing basis as than 700 awards, followed by education, public admin- we use this program is also challenging, in a positive istration, social sciences (thats a big categorynot justway. For me, its exciting to see how the utility of that students studying social sciences, but also anythingdatabase is growing and how it helps us.related to that), visual and performing arts, psychology,There are also other challenging areas of the job that the legal profession, multi-disciplinary, and ethnic,I enjoy. There are certain areas where students are culture and gender studies. not eligiblefor instance if theyre not attending an accredited institutionand having those conversa-On a related note, have you noticed anytions with them is challenging, but they also provide shifts in the number of students enteringinformation that enables me to learn. these fields during the time you have been working at Indspire? If you could speak directly to educators It does shift over the years. In 2020-2021, engineeringteaching Indigenous students who are was in the top 10, whereas it dropped out this year. Igetting ready to graduate from high school, will say that STEM (Science, Technology, Engineeringwhat would you tell them based on what and Math) has grown over the years, but we dontyou hear from applicants?get down into the weeds as to why that is. It mightI would say that they should encourage them to apply be because our donors wish to support students inand to make use of the Indigenous Centre because STEM and business, so that some of the focus of ourthe centre is there for them and they should utilize communications and marketing department will targetit. My daughter went off to university, and she ended those areas. up getting really sick, and this happened to be at 60indspiration2022'