By Fr. Aaron Solberg, Fort Smith

As a church, and as a priest, we carry many mandates. To be visible. To be a force for reconciliation. To invest in both the present and the future of our communities. And above all, to invest in the people who make up these ommunities. But how do we do that in a meaningful and tangible way?

At St. John’s, we believe one answer is to create something that touches all of these goals at once. That’s why we’ve launched a new initiative: the St. Olga Scholarship. This scholarship is offered to high school students from Fort Smith who are leaving the community to pursue further education—students who are committed to bringing their skills and knowledge back to the Northwest Territories to improve life for the people here. It’s not just about education. It’s about service, return, and renewal.

The scholarship is named after St. Olga of Alaska, a Yup’ik woman who lived her whole life in a small Alaskan village. Her husband served as both the postmaster and the priest, while she served the people as a midwife and healer— known for her compassion, her strength, and her deep, quiet faith. She was called “a mother to the broken.” The Orthodox Church has canonized her as the patron saint of midwives and survivors of sexual violence. St. Olga’s story offers us a different image of the Church—one not entangled with the painful legacies that mark so much of Christian history in the North.

Through this scholarship, we want to offer not only financial support but also a witness—a witness to another way of being Christian. A way of being present. A way of investing in our youth, in our land, and in our future.

I have the honour of presenting the St. Olga Scholarship for the very first time this year, to two outstanding students here in Fort Smith— including one who is Inuvialuit, a people closely related to the Yup’ik. This is only the beginning. But we believe it is a good beginning.