Connecting Students to Their Communities

By: Lance Hiltz, STF Communications

Jonah Toth is founder and executive director of Passion2action, a nonprofit, grassroots youth empowerment organization in Saskatchewan.

For the past two years, Toth and his team have partnered with the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation to create and implement the Connect School-Community Microgrant Program, which provides microgrants of up to $500 to teachers across the province to support projects that build student leadership skills and connections within school communities. The STF funds the program as part of its sponsorship and community investment efforts, and the Passion2action team of volunteers connects teachers with microgrant funding and support.

“Connect has been such a wonderful partnership between Passion2action and the STF,” says Toth. “We get to help teachers bring their students out into their communities, and help students learn the importance of connecting with their broader community in a hands-on way.

“Post-pandemic, we were seeing that schools and teachers were looking for opportunities to engage with the community outside their school walls. The Connect program has been such a meaningful way to help facilitate that and to recognize all the great supports that teachers provide to their students in and out of the classroom. Teachers are building up the next generation of leaders in this province.”

Connect projects align with one or more of the program themes – arts and culture, citizenship and activism, environmentalism, social and emotional well-being, and Truth and Reconciliation. Leadership and skill development modules are available to teachers throughout the year, and virtual sessions give teachers a chance to network, share about their projects and support one another from across the province. The first cohort of teachers in 2023-24 supported 12 teachers from schools throughout Saskatchewan. This year, the program supported 10 teachers from seven different school divisions and nine communities.

One of the teachers in the 2024-25 cohort is Merrissa Karmark from Englefeld School. Her microgrant project saw Grades 7 to 10 practical and applied arts students build birdhouses with clients at Humboldt’s Futuristic Industries. Futuristic Industries is an organization that provides vocational training, residential support, recreational opportunities, employment support, individual programming services and community involvement for people living with disabilities. Futuristic Industries’ clients precut boards in their woodshop and instruct students through assembling the birdhouses. As of this writing, Karmark plans to have students place the birdhouses around the school in the spring, which will support species diversity in the community.

“We have lots of really dense spruce trees, open quiet areas and natural brush around the school,” Karmark says. “There are lots of different birds that come through the town of Englefeld, but not a ton of feeder locations that get maintained throughout the year. We wanted to create space to welcome species into our community and school grounds.

“Working with Futuristic Industries was such a great experience,” she says. “We don’t have a woodshop at our school, and my kids are really interested in woodworking and building. It was really cool to see the clients at Futuristic Industries share their skills. For a lot of students, it was their first time holding a drill. And Futuristic Industries was super excited about the project; they were on board right away. They were a really great partner. The project helped achieve a few different goals in a really meaningful, concrete way. And we wouldn’t have been able to do this project in the same way without the microgrant.”

Shelley Deck from Kelliher School is another member of this year’s Connect teacher cohort. She received microgrant funding for a project entitled Better Together: Arts in the Classroom, which is a day of rotating workshops in the school, put on by teachers, parents, students, invited guests, artists and community members. These workshops will be made available to all students in the school, prekindergarten to Grade 12. Students had a large role in planning the event.

“Students have been guiding us in terms of what they want to see, and we try to give them as much agency as possible. We’re getting kids excited about being in school,” she says. “We are working with SaskCulture, and part of the microgrant money we received will go towards getting those artists out into our rural area, because we are an hour and a half away from the larger centres. We do everything that we can to make sure that we’re not living in a silo, and that the school is an integral part of the community. And Kelliher School is definitely the heart of our community.

“I want to make sure that [the STF] understands how grateful I am that you are giving people the opportunity to engage with these projects,” Deck says. “And not just for the kids, but for myself as an educator, I have found this program really, really inspiring. I don’t know what else to say except, I’m grateful. This program has made a difference in the work that it’s doing.”

On May 8, 2,000 students and teachers from across the province gathered in Regina or joined virtually for this year’s Inspire event. Inspire is Passion2action’s flagship youth empowerment event dedicated to introducing Saskatchewan youth to inspiring local role models, raising awareness for important local and global issues, and helping young people recognize their potential to be active citizens and community leaders. This year, Inspire featured a presentation celebrating the work of the first Connect cohort of students and teachers. You can watch the video on the passion2action website.

From Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation Bulletin – Summer 2025