The Road To Freedom Initiative:

Why did i start the rtf tour?

Because I care about it. People care about a wide variety of different things I care about creating content and helping others to achieve their creative dreams.

It’s been a healing journey for me as well as I didn’t get introduced to my native culture until my early 20s and it changed my life. It connected me to a piece and calmness I never experienced anywhere else. It helped me find grounding within myself and connect to my inner spirit.

After speaking in a couple First Nation Communities I got to know the people in the community and it reminded me of family instantly, lots of laughs curious conversations and entertaining storytelling.

I remember the feeling after the first Road To Freedom program workshop we had in a community it made me realize these Indigenous youth have all that it takes to succeed in an artistic career. They’re natural storytellers, natural performers who express their emotions with a naturally and with humility and they are eager to learn.

Only thing they are missing is the hands-on training, education and mentorship in the areas of arts such as filmmaking acting, writing and content creating.

Growing up I had access to all of this and I was fortunate enough to have a theatre play in my school at an early age. Which helped me find a passion that help drive the next 25 years of my life. It brought me to a career in the film industry acting in TV shows and Movies and speaking to thousands of people across Canada.

It’s also brought an ambition and reason for me to go down a healing journey because as they say in order to be a better artist you must become a better person.

In an artistic career you develop skills along the way and learning new skills develops a tremendous amount of focus and discipline. Drugs and alcohol can take me away from that and they have in the past so it’s encouraged me down a journey that I may not of been so persuaded to go down without this passion for the arts.

I care about helping people develop their artistic skills and I always root for the underdog and I feel that First Nation Communities are the underdog in Canada. The fact that they can still laugh and persevere and survive together with undergoing years of isolation and discrimination against them, makes me view them as very courageous, ambitious and admirable people.

Indigenous people endured and yet continue to persevere and I feel there are a lot of leader ship and strength building skills that they can teach us. Indigenous communities inspire me and they motivate me to keep pushing forward.

I just feel the youth have everything it takes to achieve their dreams in the arts and it’s our mission to bring the same training, education and opportunities in this career as we received here in the City.

We want to reach every First Nation Community in Canada from coast to coast to coast.

They to have a voice they want to share, feelings they want to express and stories they want to showcase so let’s help them achieve it,

I don’t mind competition in this career as long as the rules are fair so let’s make it a fair game. The same education, support and opportunities is the first step to that so that we all can have the same shot at happiness, creative expression and success.

Check out more visit our website @ www.roadtofreedomtour.com

The Road To Freedom program has now been to over 60 First Nation Communities and has trained 1000’s of Indigenous youth. Over the passed 8 years the program has developed and has broadened the range of artistic training from Acting, Film Making, Directing, Social Media & Photography.

The youth have a wide range of interest and are eager to learn the ins and outs of these topics. We coach and introduce them to the foundation of these arts and how they can develop these skills into not only fun hobbies but passionate careers.

In today’s world you don’t need to leave home to succeed in a film career. With social media you can now pull your camera phone out anywhere you are and start creating films or taking pictures.

Thing is like anything new you are learning it is always good to surround yourself with other people who share the same interests and embrace the community of support from others who share the same drive to learn.

This has also been the foundation of our program. To be the supportive community that us artists need to gain the confidence and courage to express ourselves and share out stories.

We have been honoured to have guest speakers and guest Youtubers come out and join the tour, sharing their insight and experience on being full time Youtubers and what that all entails.

The team at Bufferfestival in Toronto were the first to join the tour and support the mission. They saw the value in what our program was doing and they wanted to be apart of the support system for the youth sharing their expertise, mentorship and training.

Huge thank you to all the guests who have given their time and energy to helping the Road To Freedom program reach more Indigenous youth. We appreciate all of you!

#Bryanfransico #Corrado-Coia #Samsung #Bufferfestival #emileroy #Zackramelan #Istiana #BellMTS #Henrys #CanadianHeritage