This is a foundational program at the heart of Tatamagouche Centre. ASPIRE 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.
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 Center 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.
Hanna Gehrels (they/them) is a facilitator and founder of the PEI Wild Child Forest School Programs, which is a play-based, inquiry-driven, and child-led recreational program designed to connect children and youth with the natural world. Hannah learned to facilitate through activist and community-building work in Epekwitk (PEI) through their work with the 2SLGBTQ+ community, migrant workers, and environmental justice. Hannah is also a lead facilitator of the Forest School Practioners Course with the Child and Nature Alliance of Canada. They live with their family on the sandy shores of Epekwitk (PEI) with their cat Serena, and spend their free time finding ways to incorporate play and nature into everything they do.
Rena Kulczycki (they/them) - Mi’kma’ki is a non-binary, queer person of Korean and Polish descent, grateful to be living in the unceded and traditional territory of the Mi'kmaq people, facilitating change, growth and grounding for and with individuals and communities across Turtle Island for over 20 years. In this time, they’ve been developing and fostering an anti-racist, anti-oppressive, trauma informed approach to their work, toweards the realization of collective dreams for a just and thriving future for us all.
A curious, creative and thoughtful facilitator, Rena brings an uncanny ability to see and distill clarity from complex conversations, a calm and humorous approach to wisdom sharing, and a gift for fostering spaces that support vulnerability, connection, and care in learning communities. Their lifelong curiosity about almost everything fuels their energy for new challenges, connections and learning, along with an adaptability to the needs of diverse groups and different thinkers.
Currently Rena is the Student Engagement Community of Learning Consultant with the UpLift Partnership, a program facilitator and support at the Tatamagouche Centre, and an associate of the HeartWood Centre for Community Youth Development. They live in (and serve on the board for) a housing cooperative in K’jipuktuk with 2 sassy and sweet dogs, the best roommate ever, and countless plants blessing the space with growth and grounding. Alongside their joy for designing and facilitating processes for change, Rena delights in making up new words for old songs, open skies and earthy air, storytelling, witnessing growth in people and nature, and all things that reveal the magic of the universe.
We grateful to our partners United Way of Colchester County, Catherine Donnelly Foundation, United Way, New Horizons for Seniors, Seeds of Hope Youth, and UCC Foundation.