Roger

I called a man at the top of the world who answered the phone and replied, “Roger”, every time. I’m sure he expected researches whenever it rang. When I visited him he was frosted in ice living in an a modest home with only a frame exposed to the world. As I walked through it I noticed sheets of ice filling the spaces in between 2x4s like spider webs. I asked him why he did not have walls and said that to live in the arctic you must sacrifice them. Once spring comes and the snow melts- the water pressure on the house could crush the walls. We stood outside and I asked the disheveled man what it was like to live in the solitary north. He made no attempt to shake off the frozen moisture on his hair. He pointed at a large structure in the distance- an enormous product of man. A project so grand yet so obscure it would only exist in the arctic. A spherical object with a rusty orange hue with cylindrical figures in between the sides and the front-curving up like small horns. Giant sheets of black  ran across the face which made it look like a helmet. Its purpose was unknown but the fact it still remains is a testament to the idea it withstands the arctic which makes it less of a structure but more so a mountain, summit, an apex of land forged by man. “I remember going in there, and putting on my old diving suit when the oil levels got high- I would swim around for a long time” Roger said. Solitary-an intrepid man. He told me of the hardships of living there and began discussing the exposure to the cold, waking up covered in jet fuel. pictures of his son moved.

The next was a small town filling with people escaping crashing economic lands- cramming into small apartments built for clean survival- built without any knowledge of intricacy or beauty beyond sterility. Tundra.

A hike learning from apes the grace of nonviolence.

“Dear Paul:

Thanks for expressing interest in the possibility of joining Frontiers Foundation-Operation Beaver and working as a volunteer in the north of Canada.  I would like to try and provide you with some information that might help you decide whether or not this is something that is right for you and if you want to follow up by making an application to join Frontiers Foundation.

Frontiers Foundation is a federally chartered non-profit charitable organization that has been actively working in Canada since 1968.  Our mandate is to provide international groups of volunteers to small, northern, usually Aboriginal, communities to assist on a variety of community development projects.  Over the years these projects have primarily involved our volunteers working on housing projects and other construction oriented activities.  Our volunteers would join with the community work force on the construction, repair, or renovations, of homes for low-income families.  However the past six years has seen a dramatic change in the focus of Frontiers Foundation and we now send the majority of our volunteers up to work in schools in the far north. 

The work done by our volunteers mainly involves assisting as tutors for students with learning or behavioral problems, helping as teacher's aides, and assisting in many different capacities.  Our volunteers have also supervised libraries within the schools, instructed on computers, helped with different subjects such as art, physical education, and music classes, and have assisted in many other ways as they have been needed.  We try to use the talents, experience, and interests, of our volunteers when we assign them to particular projects.

We ask that our volunteers commit to a minimum stay with Frontiers Foundation of ten months which is the full school year..  Since most of our projects start in late August or early September, this usually means that the volunteers commit to stay through to the end of June.  We require such a long commitment for several reasons.  First of all it is extremely expensive to send volunteers to the far north of Canada and we require that length of time to justify the costs involved.  It also takes the volunteers a great deal of time to get to know the students, the members of the community, and how things are done, or not done, in the north.  Previously we had asked for a minimum commitment of only five months and I found that the volunteers who left at that time were finally making a real contribution to the school and the community and then we were sending in new people.  The majority of our volunteers in previous years usually decided to stay for the full school year so hopefully this length of commitment will not be too difficult for you.

If you were to be accepted to volunteer with Frontiers Foundation, and if you are from outside of the country, you would be responsible for your own travel to and from Canada.  Frontiers Foundation will cover all of your travel within Canada to and from the project, your food and living expenses, insurance, and provide you with winter clothing that is adequate for the far north of Canada where temperatures regularly fall to forty below zero and colder in the winter.  We also provide a living allowance of $50.00 a week that can be used as spending money.  The end result is that joining Frontiers Foundation should not cost you anything other than what you might spend on souvenirs and extras.

There are several things that I want to stress very strongly.  The communities in which we work almost always suffer from a variety of very serious social problems with the worst of these being alcohol and drug abuse.  The alcoholism rate in some of the communities in which we work is as high as seventy percent of all adults in the community and this creates extremely serious problems for our volunteers.  The alcoholism also results in such things as child neglect, spousal abuse, and many other problems and this is something that our volunteers have to deal with every day on the projects. 

Our volunteers are usually asked to work with those students who are most in need of extra attention and these are the students with learning and behavioral problems.  Many of the students with whom we work suffer from a condition called Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) which occurs when the mother abuses alcohol when she is pregnant.  This results in the children having many difficulties with formal learning and this can cause a lot of anxiety and frustration that manifests itself in serious behavioral problems.  Working with these students is extremely challenging, demanding, and frustrating, but it can also result in tremendous satisfaction.  We send our volunteers to those communities where the need is the greatest and this also means where the challenges are the greatest.

Working in the far north of Canada also has other serious challenges.  The temperature will get to minus forty to minus fifty and this can be very difficult especially for those people not used to cold weather.  In the far north there can be twenty-four hours a day of darkness in the middle of winter and this is also very hard to adjust to for our volunteers.  You mind believes that since it is dark you should be tired even though it might be two in the afternoon and it can take quite a while to get used to this change.  Things are also done very differently in the north and you will find that it is incredibly hard to organize and get things done.  This is the nature of the north and it will not change.

We are looking for volunteers who are able to meet these challenges and to make a project successful under extremely difficult circumstances.  One person will see the challenges and give up as they are extremely difficult, while another person will see the problems as challenges and will thrive while overcoming those challenges.  If you were to be accepted to join Frontiers Foundation I can guarantee you that you will be tested regularly and we need people who will not get discouraged and who will work to overcome those tests.

We are looking for outgoing and extroverted people with a strong and genuine desire to meet new people, do new things, and to learn about a different culture and way of life.  The volunteers that frustrate me the most are those people that do the work in the schools and then return home to read, write, or watch television.  That is not why we send people on projects.  The people who do the best on our projects are those volunteers that are involved in every aspect of community life and are out doing something in the community in their spare time.  If there is something going on in the community we hope that our volunteers are involved.  If nothing is going on then our volunteers will get something going that will involve the community.  On many of our projects the volunteers have started sports programmes, different clubs in the school, drop-ins, and many other activities.  This is a unique opportunity for the right people and I hope that the people selected to join our programme are the kind of people that will make the most out of this tremendous situation.

We will next be accepting volunteers in April and May of 2009 to start on our projects in late August and early September of 2009.  If you wish to apply for one of these positions it would be best to submit your application by the end of May.  We will likely be choosing around thirty new volunteers at that time.  You can download the application and recommendation forms from our web site at www.frontiersfoundation.ca by clicking on the word "volunteer" in the orange stripe at the top of the page.  This will bring you to the necessary forms.

Thank you for your interest in Frontiers Foundation and I hope that we hear from you soon.

Don Irving”