At Leading Innovative and Engaging Youth Programs we share best practices, applied theory, techniques, and experiential activities you can use to engage youth, meet their real needs, deepen their experiences, enhance and build on their strengths and gifts, and identify ways to more deeply connect young people to community action.
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.
Briana Miller (she/her) is an experienced facilitator and educator that is passionate about social justice and engaging people in collaborative conversations and experiences to create social and systemic change. Briana as a youth, was involved as a facilitator and engaged in a variety of youth programs which shaped and solidified her understanding of how youth work can save, transform, and empower lives to impact communities. Briana’s youth engagement and facilitation work is deeply rooted in the practice of Art of Hosting as well as the Heartwood Centre for Community Youth Developments framework. Her facilitation and youth work experience ranges from youth-government conferences, anti-stigma events around mental health, leading youth engagements across NS for the development of the sexual violence strategy of Nova Scotia, founding the YMCA’s 2SLGBTQIA+ Newcomer Youth Committee, facilitating at Social Justice Youth Camp, and facilitating different youth programs, leadership groups and conferences. Over the past 7 years her work has primarily been focused in working with immigrant and refugee youth at the YMCA Centre for Immigrant Programs from ongoing support to program design and facilitation. She is currently the Coordinator of the NS Gender-Based Violence Prevention Project and also the Coordinator for the National GBV Settlement Sector Strategy Champion Network. She focuses on building the capacity and knowledge of service providers to be more culturally informed in their work around GBV prevention with newcomers and program. Her work with newcomer youth is currently focused on creating ongoing interactive programs where youth can engage deeper in prevention of GBV and build their skills to take action in their own communities through youth led and/or art-based initiatives. Briana’s work is all deeply rooted in cultural humility, feminist, anti-oppressive, anti-racist and trauma informed practices.
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.