This is a foundational program at the heart of Tatamagouche Centre. It allows you to learn effective facilitation skills and creative program design, leading to transformational community learning and development. Using an experiential approach participants are afforded in-depth practice, discussion, and reflection.
Whether you organize meetings, workshops or design complex projects or programs, this is an opportunity for you to gain skills, clarify leadership styles and deepen insights. Designed for both experienced and novice facilitators, participants will learn and practice this popular education methodology developed and honed by Tatamagouche Centre for over 30 years.
Drawing from a number of sources including human relations training, popular adult education, participatory development, spiritual growth, and organizational planning, the ASPIRE model of the Tatamagouche Centre combines theory and practice in “action-reflection” cycles through which participants learn from their own experience and efforts. It is this participatory, “hands-on” learning process, combined with inputs from contemporary adult education, human development and social change theory, which constitute the heart of the model.
The ASPIRE Model is now foundational for many community education programs throughout the Maritime region in Canada. Participants receive a Facilitation and Design certificate at the completion of the program.
“I feel with the ASPIRE model – the potential for personal and social change is clear.”
“Another successful, transformative, empowering experience with the Tatamagouche Centre!”
Program Cost:
True Program Cost - $1,606 includes tuition, meals & single lodging. Double lodging reduces overall cost by $125. Please use coupon: ASPIRE-double
Barrier-reduced Program Cost - $296 includes tuition, meals & single lodging. This is made possible through grant funds and donations.
Generous Program Cost - $1750 includes tuition, meals & single lodging and your generous donation supports others to attend. You will receive a charitable donation receipt for your support.
Leadership:
Brian Braganza, Mohamed Yaffa, Rena Kulczycki.
Mohamed Yaffa has been working in Diversity Inclusion and Cultural Competence for nearly twenty years. From 2007 to 2018. Mohamed was the coordinator and Consultant for the Diversity and Inclusion Program with Nova Scotia Health Authority – focusing on reducing health inequities for marginalized populations in the province. He coordinated cultural and family violence prevention programs for the Immigrant Settlement Association of Nova Scotia (ISANS) for six years, facilitating the bridging of cultural gaps for new comers to Canada, awareness raising and skill development for private and public sector service providers.
Mohamed has been part of the Tatamagouche Centre Program Resource Group (PRG) since 2002 and has applied the ASPIRE model for educational programming for over 15 years. Mohamed has been involved in many social justice, bridge-building and inter-faith initiatives in Nova Scotia, bringing a multi-cultural perspective to the work.
Brian Braganza is a facilitator and experiential educator specializing in Leadership, Community Youth Development, and Masculinity. He was prepared by Parker J. Palmer and the Centre for Courage & Renewal as a facilitator in 2014 and has led retreats in Nova Scotia and the U.S. Brian has a 25-year history with the Tatamagouche Centre and with HeartWood Centre for Community Youth Development. Brian delivers experiential programs for boys and men and co-designed T.O.N.E., Therapy Outside Normal Environments, a unique men’s therapeutic project, which builds men’s abilities to connect authentically and live into their wholeness. Brian lives with his wife Tara and their daughter near Bridgewater, Nova Scotia. He is also a wilderness traveler, writer and musician.
Rena Kulczycki (pronouns: they/them/their) is a facilitator who believes in building communities where our limits can be lovingly challenged and our ideas collaboratively cultivated. To that end, Rena designs and delivers programs that engage and lift up the gifts and wisdom of every participant, applying wit and skill to foster opportunities for authenticity and courageous vulnerability, centering voices from the margins, as we strive toward stronger (more magical!) communities of trust and support.
Rena draws on many experiences including training in conflict mediation and anti-oppressive facilitation, delivering youth camps and conferences on social justice, global issues and for trans and non-binary youth, serving on the board of and living in a housing co-operative, studying Sociology & International Development in university, living in rural and urban places across Turtle Island, and growing up in K'jipuktuk coming from a family of immigrants from both Poland and Korea. Rena unites these experiences and their passion for positive collaborative change in their work to heal and mobilize communities towards justice, particularly around gender and race.
