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Winners of the essay contest were recently announced in Sudbury. For more information about the contest visit http://northonjobs.com/ON/essay/essay.html

For job opportunities visit the Diversity Canada web site at http://diversitycanada.org and NorthONJobs - Northern Ontario's premier job site at http://northonjobs.com.

from http://www.timminspress.com/webapp/sitepages/content.asp?contentID=24566&catname=Local+News 

Writers share their view of North’s virtues for youth

By Laurel Myers - Timmins Daily Press - Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Northern Ontario is a great place to work and a beautiful place to live, according to Celia Sankar, executive director of Diversity Canada Foundation.

The foundation wants to get this message out to the youth in Northern Ontario by initiating an essay competition for youth, aged 16-30, who are living in, or are originally from, the North.

The participants were asked to write why youth should choose to live and work in Northern Ontario.

Dawn Elmore saw the contest advertised in her local paper and decided it reflected her life.

After growing up in Thunder Bay, Elmore saw a lack of job opportunities available to her and moved south.

“I loved the North, but I didn’t think there were any jobs here,” she said.

She remained in southern Ontario for 10 years before making the move back to the North.

A weekend visit to Elmore’s boyfriend’s hometown of Goulais River showed the couple job opportunities existed in the area.

“I’m glad to be here now,” Elmore said.

“We’re able to do so much more than we were in southern Ontario.”

The message behind her essay, which won first prize in the competition, was to find a way to show youth, while they’re still in the North, all the things available to them.

“I didn’t really appreciate everything I had until I realized what I was missing,” she said about moving away.

Elmore admitted finding job opportunities is a lot about who you know.

“(Northern Ontario) needs to find a way to get the message out to people who don’t know anybody, that there are jobs, there are opportunities. I think they’re just hidden,” she said.

The awards presentation took place at the Sudbury Public Library on Monday.

Osprey Media LP, which owns The Sudbury Star and was a key sponsor of the event, is responsible for getting the word out about the contest, said Sankar.

David Kilgour, the publisher and general manager of The Sudbury Star, was on-hand to present the second- and third-place prizes of $500 and $250 respectively.

“This was a no-brainer for us to become involved in when Diversity Canada presented the program to us,” Kilgour said.

“It’s a great fit for an existing program we have the Northern Ontario Youth Program.”

The Youth Program includes the Ontera Youth Achievement Awards and the Osprey Youth Development Workshops.

The awards honour youth who best demonstrate innovation, leadership, altruism and community building in the North.

The workshops create a forum for discussion on actions required to build the North’s communities from within.

“The purpose is to bring awareness to youth in our communities and to find new ways, through working with youth, to keep young people in the North,” he said.

“Encouraging youth to stay in the North is very important to us to build the types of communities that will thrive in the future.”

As well as sponsoring the Diversity Canada essay competition, Osprey Media LP contributes to youth retention in the North by providing jobs in areas such as computer programming.

“I’m looking forward to a day when we don’t have to print in our paper the discouraging stats about the number of young people who are leaving the community,” Kilgour said.

Other sponsors of the event included the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines through the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation (NOHFC) with a $1,000 donation for first prize, and Costco Wholesale Canada Ltd. of Sudbury who provided the honourable-mention winners with $50 and a membership card for Costco.

Diversity Canada is a non-profit organization with a mission to promote Northern Ontario to today’s youth.

Discussing the roots of the essay competition, Sankar said it’s important to first understand why young people leave and what they think about Northern Ontario.

“Once we understand why they are leaving, we can put our efforts together to create a place where youth would like to stay,” she said.

The essays were sent from across Northern Ontario and shared a number of common solutions to keeping the youth in the North.

Sankar listed jobs as the No. 1 thing in common.

“We need jobs for highly educated and highly skilled workers.”

The second most valuable asset, as agreed upon in the essays, was a wider variety of cultural and recreational activities, emphasizing lifestyle is as equally important as the job opportunities.

The third was a product of the first two, retaining greater numbers of an individual’s peer group.

“It’s hard for people here to not be able to socialize because everybody is down south,” Sankar said.

Educational opportunities were also on the list, stating Northern Ontario should have more post-secondary courses to choose from.

Aime Dimatteo, executive director of the NOHFC, who was also present at the awards ceremony, realizes the necessity of job opportunities for retaining youth in the North.

“Northern Ontario’s pristine wilderness and clean air won’t do it, we need the job opportunities here as well,” he said.

“We need to communicate to our youth in whatever way we can.”

Second place in the essay competition went to Mary Brohart of Massey.

The third-place winner was Taryn Reid, originally from Sault Ste. Marie.

Seven participants were honoured as runner-ups in the competition.