First Nations Community Outreach – Lulu Pei and Ada Zhang, Year Two (2015)

Though Transition students are faced with great workloads on a daily basis, everyone is open to playing important roles in their communities. Throughout the year, Transition students have reached out to their communities in various ways, such as helping the Canadian Blood Services, volunteering for summer camps, youth groups, UBC events, and even in research laboratories and hospitals.

For the first time this summer, a current Transition student volunteered at a First Nations Community Outreach. She helped out with the Emerging Aboriginal Scholars Summer Camp at the UBC First Nations House of Learning. The program was designed to provide aboriginal students with a more solid foundation in Mathematics, Science, and English. She met a variety of people with different backgrounds, which enhanced her cross-cultural understanding. This student is continuing this connection into the school year, and has been able to get in touch with the Musqueam Band. During the first three weeks of September, she and two other classmates volunteered with a strike response program which provided young students with educational and fun activities. Services like these exhibit Transition students’ strong sense of community awareness in addition to their accelerated academic learning.