Coast Mountain College will be one of four post-secondary institutions in Northern British Columbia to work in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation.
With the Coast Mountain College set to deliver on enhances supports for Indigenous students, while also investing in technological solutions to improve access for remote education, all part of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Coast Mountain College, the College of New Caledonia, Northern Lights College, and the University of Northern British Columbia will share equally in a total of $380,000 from the Mastercard Foundation Recovery and Resilience program.
The scope of the project was announced yesterday by way of an information release from the Terrace based campus of the college which serves the North Coast and Haida Gwaii.
The program will enable Indigenous communities and young people to respond to the short-term impacts of this pandemic, while strengthening their resilience in the long-run.
Indigenous students studying at the four northern B.C. post-secondary institutions will also receive academic mentoring and mental health counselling to help them navigate the barriers and challenges that come with isolation at home during these unprecedented times.
Part of the collaborative effort will be to address technology issues in rural and remote communities.
Another exciting component of the collaborative partnership with the Mastercard Foundation is exploring the possibility of deploying new last-mile connectivity technology in remote communities to provide students with more access to distance learning. Installing this technology will have the added benefit of improving connectivity for the entire community.
Coast Mountain College President and CEO Justin Kohlman noted how the funding will assist students to continue on with their studies.
“At Coast Mountain College a large part of our student population is Indigenous and many of those students live in rural and remote communities. We appreciate the generous support from the Mastercard Foundation to support our students during this time of COVID-19 and allow learners from across our region to continue on their transformative educational pathways,”
So far, Coast Mountain College has not outlined how it plans to distribute or allocate its share of the funding from the Mastercard Foundation
You can review the full background to the funding program here.
More notes related to Coast Mountain College and post secondary education in the Northwest can be reviewed here.
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