Hooray! It’s press release release day! The countdown to heading up north starts NOW!!

Toronto – April 15, 2014 – DreamCatcher Mentoring (DCM), an e-mentorship program that pairs Canadian high school students with mentors working in their chosen career fields, in partnership with Lindsay Zier-Vogel’s The Love Lettering Project, launch the 2014 DCM Mentor Tour May 4-9 2014. Students will participate in a workshop in art- and entertainment-related career pathways, and also be invited to write love letters to their communities and distribute them anonymously to their neighbours. Since 2010, Zier-Vogel has mentored six DCM students in the fields of writing and dance.

Since 2005, DreamCatcher Mentoring has provided high quality one-to-one online matches designed to empower students to realize the rewards of staying in school. Having mentored six students over the past several years, the tour provides a unique opportunity for Zier-Vogel to connect with her current mentees face-to-face.

Together, DCM and The Love Lettering Project will each celebrate their respective ten year program anniversaries via an exciting partnership reaching Canada’s North. With funding and operational support from DCM and travel funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, Zier-Vogel will share her career experience as a community engagement artist and writer and bring her internationally-renowned The Love Lettering Project to three different northern cities – Yellowknife, NT; Whitehorse, YT, and Fort Smith, NT.

“I am thrilled to be celebrating ten years of The Love Lettering Project in the north and look forward to meeting my current student mentees and seeing first-hand what they love about where they live,” says Zier-Vogel.

“By providing a combination of hands-on programming from mentor tours and online mentoring northern students can better discover their interests and abilities and be supported in pursuing these interests and abilities throughout their secondary schooling and beyond,” says Josh Silvertown, President, Executive Director and Co-Founder, DreamCatcher Mentoring. “The Love Lettering Project fits well with DCM’s mandate to help youth to share with other Canadians what is special about their home communities in the North and build hope for their futures.”

2014 DCM Mentor + Love Lettering Project tour

• May 5-6, 2014: Whitehorse, YK: Vanier Catholic Secondary and Porter Creek Secondary.
• May 8, 2014: Fort Smith, NWT: Paul William Kaeser High School
• May 9, 2014: Yellowknife, NWT: Ecole St. Patrick’s High School

 

About DreamCatcher Mentoring:

DreamCatcher Mentoring is an e-mentoring program that connects northern Canadian high school students with Canadian mentors around the world. Students engage in a one-to-one online mentorship with a Canadian mentor working in their aspired career field. DreamCatcher Mentoring was developed in response to the declining number of students that enter and graduate high school in northern Canada compared to the rest of the country. Since 2005, DreamCatcher Mentoring has matched over 1,500 Grade 9-12 Yukon, NWT and Nunavut high school students representing 26 schools (24 communities) one-on-one with mentors working in their aspired ‘dream careers.’ www.dreamcatchermentoring.ca

About The Love Lettering Project:

The Love Lettering Project is a community arts engagement project that get people writing anonymous love letters to the places they live. It has the capacity to transform individual’s relationship to public space and their communities through social engagement. This year marks the 10^th anniversary of Zier-Vogel’s internationally renowned The Love Lettering Project, a community art project that reinvents the ritual of receiving love letters, transforming the physical space of our city, while highlighting the transformative capacity of even the smallest gesture of love. In the last ten years, thousands of people have participated in over 25 events in Toronto and the UK. loveletteringproject.com

About Lindsay Zier-Vogel

Lindsay Zier-Vogel is a writer, bookmaker and arts educator based in Toronto. She is the creator of The Love Lettering Project, a community arts engagement project bringing love letters to strangers since 2004. In 2013, Lindsay received funding from the Canada Council for the Arts to take the project on a 5-city tour of the UK and in 2014, she received support from the Canada Council to take The Love Lettering Project up to Canada’s Far North. Lindsay has been a mentor for DCM since 2010 and is currently working on a novel. www.loveletteringproject.com

For more information contact:

Claire SmithProgram Manager, Dream Catcher Mentoring –1-888-806-0447 x102 or claire@dreamcatchermentoring.ca

Lindsay Zier-Vogel, The Love Lettering Project – 416-432-2275 or loveletteringproject@gmail.com