About Us

Learn about who we are and what we do

What It Is

RISE for Health and Wellness is a summer youth program that is mentored by University of Calgary academic and support staff. The program is a two-month program that delivers topics on health and wellness to immigrant and refugee high school students across Calgary. Students are taught in diverse topics of physical, social, and mental health along with sessions on leadership skills. Previous examples of taught topics include social determinants of health, coping with stress, and Indigenous health. Each session is facilitated by RISE team members and guest speakers including healthcare professionals and researchers. The sessions consist of presentations, discussions, interactive activities, and field trips. The summer youth learning program has been carried out in previous years since 2018 either in-person or through virtual zoom meetings.

What Participants Do

During the program, the youth participants are tasked to do a research project where they explore a community health issue of their interest and summarize their findings into a research infographic poster. The infographics are presented at the end of the program at a poster symposium that are attended by the families of participants, community members and RISE members. Participants learn a wide range of health and wellness topics and are mentored by University of Calgary students.

What Volunteers Do

The program also entails qualitative research to learn about how the program can be improved, what benefits the RISE program brings to youth participants, and what challenges youth face. University students are directly involved in organizing and analyzing the feedback responses and the focus groups, and gain valuable qualitative research experience. Student volunteers take on active leadership roles and contribute to project development and implementation in all phases, including curriculum development and recruitment of participants.

Learn More About RISE!

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