Prince George’s first responders were showing their stuff as part of the “Adventures with First Responders” event.
Throughout the day, School District 57 students in grades 10-12 got to spend time with first responders, and learn about some of the tasks they do within those careers.
For example, Paramedics taught how to apply airways, Firefighters taught how to use the high pressure hoses, and RCMP Officers taught what it’s like to do a vehicle stop.
“My brother it did last year, and he said he had the best time ever, so I wanted to try, and I don’t what I want to do when I’m older, so I thought this would help,” said Dagny Hilton, one of the students taking part.
Even in the first block of the day, the event left an impression on some of the students.
“Everything I’ve seen, I’ve been really excited for and I think I would pursue this in the future,” said Allyana Santiago, one of the students.
“I think I’ll pursue this in the future as well, it was really fun with all the experiences today,” said Adira Papick, another student.
Prior to the start of the day, the 17 students were polled as to which career they were interested in, which led to some interesting results.
“It’s pretty evenly split across the board,” said Cpl. Jennifer Cooper of the Prince George RCMP.
“We found that pretty interesting, those of us organizing it that we had such an even interest.”
CJ Hagreman was one of the students who said he was most interested in ambulance.
“I knew a lot about fire crew and RCMP, but I didn’t know a lot about ambulance, the idea of helping people in a medical way kind of interested me,” he said.
This is the second time the program has been offered, with the first time taking place in the spring of this year.
“We’re really happy with the program and how it runs, we’ve got some really good feedback from our first set of students,” Cooper said.
“We’ve kind of done the same kind of set up again, same run throughs for all of us, just trying to expose students that maybe haven’t made a whole decision on where they want to go after high school, what it’s like, some of the perks, some of the drawbacks too, we try to give them an even picture of what it’s like to either be a Paramedic or a Firefighter or a Police Officer.”
Cooper added its interesting to be interacting with a potential co-worker in this capacity.
“To think that one of these students might decide to be an RCMP Officer down the road and we might get to interact with them,” she said.
“We see that sometimes with students who’ve gone through our Youth Academy, which is another, kind of more in-depth recruiting program that we run with the School District during spring break. We do actually have current police officers that we work with who were Youth Academy students, and we love seeing that return on investment.”
While the event focuses on ambulance, fire, and policing, Cooper said there have been talks about bringing in other first responder careers.
“We wanted to keep it for the first few run throughs to kind of our primary first responders, the ones that are out in the field, taking the calls, and get our feet under us before we looked into if there was room for expansion and looking into some of the other ancillary first responder type jobs,” she explained.
While the event is for high school students, a four-year-old firefighter came to see what was going on, something Cooper said was encouraging.
“These are careers that you can spend 25-plus years in, pensionable careers which is also a selling feature, maybe not for the four-year-olds,” Cooper said.
“But they are good solid careers for people to still choose, and it’s nice to see that even from as young as four-years-old, we’re still getting interest.”
Something going on in the Prince George area you think people should know about?
Send us a news tip by emailing [email protected].
