Tuesday, March 25, 2025
3/25/2025
The Alakanuk Native Connections Program will serve our youth of Alakanuk, a Yup’ik Eskimo community located on the banks of the lower Yukon River in Southwest Alaska. We will serve youth up to age 24, providing behavioral health (BH) services using Calricaraq, a holistic, Alaska Native wellness program, to help our youth heal from past traumas, and help any youth suffering from BH disorders, and to prevent any future suicides from occurring. Calricaraq, translated “the way to be healthy”, is a curriculum based on the traditional values and ways of the people in the Y-K Delta region of southwest Alaska, and involves the incorporation of the ancestral traditional values, practices and teachings into prevention and treatment programs to help our Indigenous people heal from BH disorders. Our Native Connections Program staff will focus on providing outreach to the community to build their knowledge of identifying youth at risk for suicide, establish protocols for responding to suicides and build up a crisis response team in our community so we have the ability to respond to behavioral health (BH) crises. An Action Plan will also be developed to provide a guide for the strategies and activities to be completed during the five-year grant period. At the heart of our intervention will be the Annual Calricaraq Gathering, a 3-day event that teaches participants how to get on the healthy road of life, and the Calricaraq Facilitator Trainings, also 3-days in length, that teach participants how to begin facilitating Calricaraq activities to help our community members get on the road to wellness and recovery. In addition, we will hold weekly talking circles for the youth as well as a talking circle for parents, and we will have a strong presence in the school where we will give weekly presentations and instruction on how to live a healthy Yup’ik lifestyle. Our measurable goals and objectives include the 1) Development, review and update of our policies and procedures related to preventing and responding to youth at risk for suicide, 2) development and implementation of mental health awareness and substance misuse prevention trainings utilizing Calricaraq teachings for the school and community, 3) planning and facilitating a series of youth activities, such as fishing and camping trips, Native arts and crafts taught by elders, and movie nights and lock ins to provide healthy options for our youth to engage in, and 4) facilitate Calricaraq Gatherings and Calricaraq Facilitator Trainings for the community members. The measurement of goal one will be from the documents that are created or updated, and goals 2 through 4 will be based on the number of participants and their survey responses. It is anticipated we will serve 200 youth per year, and 1,000 in the five-year grant cycle.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).