'LiveDifferent' helping make a difference in the lives of Canadian youth

A national program is helping make a difference in the lives of Canadian youth. 

LiveDifferent is run remotely in local communities, schools and abroad. It's reached over 1.8 million students across Canada including thousands of Indigenous youth.

Elissa Grohne, director of community engagement says its circle program is geared towards students from grades seven to 12 through school assemblies, while the build program is for youthstarting at 14 years old up to adults.

Through the program, youth have helped build more than 625 homes for families all over the world.

"We work in Mexico and Dominican and then we also do Thailand trips," she said.

"We also work in Haiti too, so we've got a school there and something called Freedom Village, which is a safe haven for young girls who are escaping, human trafficking so we do a lot of work kind of all around the world.”

Grohne says LiveDifferent helps young people explore and instill important values, build stronger relationships and get activated in their communities.

"Youth are facing challenges when it comes to mental health," she said. "There seems to be a common thread of lack of connection, a lack of purpose, feeling, and so with LiveDifferent we really want to aim to instill and explore important values with them, build relationships and help them become more compassionate in their own communities."

She says the program is designed to provide a long-lasting impact on young people so that they can become more kind, compassionate and resilient human beings.

"They're in crisis and our programming really helps to address like the underpinning issues, we use positive youth development in our programming,” she said.

“We don't come in and talk to the kids about addiction or about suicide, we actually come in and provide messages of hope and purpose and belonging to them so that they can build that resiliency that they need to be able to be kind to themselves and give back to others too."

Alexis Fulton is a 17-year-old high school graduate from Smokey Lake. She first learned about LiveDifferent in Grade 9 when it came to her school.

"It was one of the only assemblies where I've heard people talk about what happened for the week after," she said. "There were still people talking about it like, ‘Oh I really liked this,’ or ‘I enjoyed this,’ or ‘this person was really fun to talk with,’ and it was just you don't see that often."

Fulton says after the circle program at her school she enrolled in the build program and spent time in Mexico helping to build a home for a family. That ended up changing her outlook on life and a future career.

"I'm on a different path. I think that doing stuff with Live Different has helped me kind of realize that for a long time, I was focused on what I could do that I would enjoy but I'd also be able to make good money," she said.

"I think that doing the stuff I've done with Live Different has helped me realize that I'd rather be poor and happy than rich and miserable, and that's kind of where I was steering myself, was rich and miserable, and that's not what I wanted for myself."

Fulton wants to pay it forward and become one of the presenters of the circle program talking to students about her experiences with LiveDifferent.

Laura Malcolm, Fulton's mom, says she's enjoyed watching her daughter grow through her experiences and always knew she was driven.

"There's just not a lot (of programs) in small communities," she said. "We have a lot of early year programming, 12 and under kids get a lot of attention, but our teens tend to get forgotten, there's nothing for them to do outside of going to a bush party."

But now Malcolm says after LiveDifferent came to the community, young people are motivated to make a difference.

"These kids are actually trying to build something," she said. "There's dances happening, there's karaoke nights happening, there's just all kinds of stuff and I do think that that mentorship program and what LiveDifferent brought to them has given them skill sets they didn't necessarily have beforehand to make that happen."

Learn more about the charity on its website.