Mâmawi Kotawân

Mâmawi Kotawân (formerly Bringing Our Fires Together): A Provincial Tele-Mentorship Network for Peer Support Workers, is a project that will focus on bringing peer support workers together into a supportive virtual space, developed and led by peers. HIV/HCV peer support workers in Saskatchewan currently have no centralized body for training or mentorship.

Mâmawi Kotawân is the spiritual successor to the Sask Stories project and will use the data and work which has already been gathered by the Sask Stories project to help with its rollout of services and supports.

Researchers from USask will work with Project ECHO – Extension For Community Health Outcomes – a global, virtual training model designed by the University of Nevada’s College of Medicine. By adopting the ECHO model, this project will have access to an international resource library, training approaches and sessions, and other supports for peer support workers in underserved areas and communities.

Sask Stories is an online database focused on the curation of published and unpublished HIV/HCV programs, projects and initiatives. The Sask Stories website will be the home of the database and include learning modules to help people use it and learn about the ongoing HIV/HCV work in Saskatchewan.

Mâmawi Kotawân is funded over a five-year period using a $1.8 million grant from the Public Health Agency of Canada. The money will be used to pay personnel, including Elders, for both bringing in Indigenous healing approaches and for community care, and to conduct training and mentorship sessions across up to eight sites and communities, to be determined, with high rates of HCV and HIV in the province.

For more information, contact: pewaseskwan@usask.ca