Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in Bridging Program

When "bridging" is not just academic

Many youth experience schooling as a place where they feel unseen, disconnected, or pressured to fit into a system that does not reflect who they are. The legacy of colonial harms continues to shape trust, belonging, and readiness for structured learning.

The challenge is not only credit completion or academic upgrading. It is rebuilding:

• Belonging as a precondition for learning. Before youth can engage with curriculum, they need to feel they belong -that the learning space reflects who they are and values what they bring.
• Confidence and identity as foundations. Educational pathways work best when youth have a clear sense of themselves, their gifts, and their place in community and on the land.
• Relational support that holds non-linear journeys. Young people's paths are rarely straight lines. They need support systems that can hold them through setbacks, pauses, and pivots.
• Cultural and land-based grounding. Learning needs to feel like home, not extraction. When education is rooted in place, language, and relationship, it becomes something youth can trust.

A systems lens rooted in Tr'ëhudè

The design is guided by a relational form of systems thinking that honors Indigenous ways of knowing:

• See the whole, not the pieces. Plan around relationships - learner-family-land-language - not isolated program components.
• Act with reciprocity. Every module and partnership must return value to the people and places that nourish it.
• Learn for emergence. The goal is not "scaling up" a rigid model, but deepening roots through iteration, reflection, and seasonal rhythm.
• Belonging as infrastructure. The model positions belonging as the primary educational intervention - the foundation that makes all other learning possible.
• Mentorship as mycelium. Support systems are designed as a living network. Like the underground fungal networks that connect and nourish forests, the Sacred and Wisdom Circles create invisible infrastructure that makes visible outcomes possible.

How we contributed

Lauren Manekin Beille and Sustainable Impact Foundation supported Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in and Yukon University through the design and planning phase by:

• Facilitating community engagement - Creating space for diverse voices to shape the program vision through interviews, circles, and a community workshop
• Bringing systems framing - Applying systems thinking approaches aligned with Tr'ëhudë values to ensure the model addresses root causes, not just symptoms
• Synthesizing insights - Translating workshop and interview insights into a coherent program model while maintaining the integrity of community voice
• Creating decision-ready tools - Developing the Menu of Possibilities and other practical resources to support next-stage implementation
• Learning from other models - Conducting an environmental scan of related programs to inform (not dictate) the design process

The completed deliverables support transition into implementation led by the Steering Committee, partners, and community.