Nurrait | Jeunes Karibus: A Decade of Empowering Students
Many of you know about our friends at Nurrait, but do you know how and when this extracurricular activity started?
Kativik Ilisarniliriniq takes pride in working alongside numerous colleagues and partner organizations, united by a shared goal: we believe that student success begins with a strong identity, heritage, and connection to the people and the land of Nunavik.
An organization that we greatly value is Nurrait | Jeunes Karibus. Having celebrated 10 years of ongoing activities in 2024, Kativik Ilisarniliriniq sat down with president and founder Valérie Raymond to find out more about how it all began.
“I loved sharing with my students what activities I got up to over the weekends. Often times it would be biking, or camping, or skiing – my students were always curious about where I had gone and what I had done”
It all started in 2013, with a group of ski enthusiasts who had decided to embark on an adventure until then unheard of: a ski/camping trip that would start in Montréal and finish in Kuujjuaq! The group had given themselves the name of project Karibou.
At the time, Valérie was teaching secondary at Jaanimmarik school in Kuujjuaq. As an outdoor enthusiast, she shared her passion with her students. Each morning, Valérie and her students would track project Karibou’s progress online through GPS. At one point, they even contacted the team via satellite telephone to speak to them personally and ask them questions about their trip!
Slowly but surely, and inspired by project Caribou, student started joining Valérie over the weekend on short ski activities, and in May when project Karibou arrived to Kuujjuaq, the students organized a ski trip to welcome the group and ski the last few kilometers with them. At that point, Valérie had the incentive and motivation to work towards offering an open air extracurricular activity for the students, upgrade the school’s ski gear, and push the students towards a bigger challenge: skiing all the way to Tasiujaq!
“We put a lot of effort into our programs to try and reach all youth across Nunavik, and we are working to expand so we can include the families as well.”
The first ski trip was a major challenge but clarified many things for Valérie. She was able to see the positive impact the outdoors activities had on the students, both in and out of the classroom. In the Fall of 2014 Nurrait | Jeunes Karibus was founded as a non-profit organization and, 10 years later, there are activities in all 14 communities, multiple programs to include student of all ages, and the team has started to integrate previous participants into roles such as administration, team leadership, etc.
So what is in store for Nurrait | Jeunes Karibus for the next 10 years? The priorities will be to continue serving the needs of Nunavik youth, but also shaping young leaders that will be willing to take leadership roles within the organization. “Nunavimmiut youth are so talented and strong. We wish to leave them completely in charge, so that it will be their input and their ideas that will respond to their needs. In 10 years, it will not be me speaking: instead it will be previous participants” concluded Valérie.
