Angela Sereda has been nominated by Sara Bryan for the national 'Kubota Community Hero' contest and out of the many, many entries Canada-wide she has made it to the final 3!!
The first prize is $20,000 for a charity of her choosing and both the second and third prizes are $5,000, also to a charity of her choosing.
Any prize money she wins will be going to a Moose Jaw charity.
We would appreciate your support by letting the community know and encouraging them to vote each day from November 10th to 16th by clicking here.
Please see the nomination essay in full below.
Kubota Community Hero Nomination Angela Sereda
Angela is one of the most positive and driven community advocates you could ever have the pleasure to meet. In her almost 30 years working in Paramedicine, she has spent a great deal of time in all areas of the community and has had the opportunity to witness firsthand some of the gaps in care that exist. Some people when faced with these deficits, while saddened, toss up their hands at a loss for what to do. Others, take a breath, roll up their sleeves and jump into the fight. Angela Sereda is one of those people. Some of her local initiatives include: co-founding a leadership program for young girls in our community to provide them with mentorship and support, establishing ‘Community Paramedic Connected-Care Model’ to provide medical support, treatment, and resources in a community-based setting for individuals who are experiencing mental health illness and substance abuse disorder, creating and teaching curriculum-based basic medical skills to elementary and high school students in Moose Jaw and surrounding area, and, chairing a board which is working to establish dedicated Hospice Palliative Care for Moose Jaw and the surrounding area in order to ensure that all individuals and their families have access to hospice palliative care through their end-of-life journey. Angela is a difference-maker and a community hero.
More Details
One of the needs that Angela recognized in our community was that some young girls do not have access to strong female role models. When young people are entering high school it is a very formative time in their lives. Angela felt that girls that age could greatly benefit from the mentoring and support of successful local women to bolster their confidence and encourage them in their goals. As such, in 2015 Angela and 2 other local businesswomen co-founded the ‘Tru-Unity Girls Leadership Program’ with the goal of “providing an opportunity for young women in Grade 9 to develop their leadership skills, embrace their strengths and celebrate diversity through presentations and interactive activities held over an 11-week program”. Throughout this program, the young women get to interact and learn from influential women and also get to attend the Business Women of Moose Jaw PRISM Awards, which celebrates exceptional women within our community.
Seeing the evaluations from previous years demonstrating that 90% of the girls from the groups felt an increased sense of belonging, self-esteem, and leadership skills lead Tru-Unity’s founders to want to do even more for the young women of Moose Jaw. As such, they introduced an annual ‘International Day of the Girl’ event which has grown larger each year. In 2019 Tru-unity hosted over 140 Grade 8 girls from Moose Jaw. The conference gave the girls a chance to meet with six mentors, including a pediatric nurse, a police sergeant, and an aircraft maintenance technician, and hear their stories about what they do for the community and how they got where they are. The mentorship aspect of the day is not only meant to be inspiring for the students but to spark an idea of what they could accomplish in the future. The key message is that anything that they want to pursue is possible. With the pandemic, this program has had to go virtual, so most recently they celebrated online with 16 classrooms of Grade 8 girls from Moose Jaw via Zoom. During this event, they had presentations on topics such as “How to be Mentally Strong During Challenging Times” and “How to Pursue your Passion and Dreams When it Goes Against the Norm”.
Somehow the more Angela does in her career, the more people she finds the time to reach out to and help when she is off duty. Angela has always been a strong supporter and advocate for patient-centered care. As a result, she became interested in Advanced Care and Community Paramedicine and returned to school to obtain her Community Paramedic Advanced Certificate so that she had the ability to offer more programs locally that provide patient-centered care. This led to her initially organizing biweekly ‘Community Paramedic Wellness Clinics’ in Moose Jaw, where the paramedics go into local housing complexes to meet with seniors and check their blood pressure, blood glucose levels, perform ECGs, and book appointments with Family Physicians. Not only does this allow better access to people who might not otherwise seek care, but also serves as a preventative measure for clients’ chronic conditions and helps to deter individuals from accessing the emergency department. Since then, she has worked collaboratively with the Saskatchewan Health Authority to evolve the Community Paramedic program so that it now provides medical support, treatment, and resources in community-based settings for individuals who are experiencing mental health illness and substance abuse disorder.
Angela joined ‘Heartland Hospice Moose Jaw Inc.’ in 2018 as she felt passionate that it is essential for all individuals and their families to have access to hospice palliative care through their end-of-life journey and Moose Jaw did not offer that. Since its inception in 2014, Heartland Hospice’s board has worked collaboratively with both the Saskatchewan Health Authority and the Ministry of Health on initiatives to support the delivery of patient and family-centered care within palliative hospice care. As a result, there is now one hospice room available in Moose Jaw and Heartland Hospice is currently fundraising to create, furnish and decorate 3 Hospice Palliative rooms with a private Family Access Door, a Family Room complete with library resources/playpen/activities for children, a Sacred Space and to continue the development of the Serenity Garden.
In 2014 Angela introduced a Health Education Grade 7 presentation following the learning objectives and guidelines laid out by the Ministry of Education. In 2018 Angela further expanded the program to offer curriculum-based presentations facilitated by herself and other volunteer paramedics available to all grade levels from Pre-k to Grade 12 in both the public and Catholic school systems. These presentations teach basic medical skills to the students. All students were provided with a presentation either by workbooks, for the younger grades, or PowerPoint for the older grades, followed by hands-on practice of basic medical skills.
There is one more of Angela’s many initiatives that should be highlighted. Angela has a calm nature about her that comforts everyone around her, making her perfect for her field. She is very in tune with the emotions of those around her. While serving as Deputy Chief and Advanced Care Paramedic for Moose Jaw & District EMS she was well aware of the effects on the mental health of paramedics caused by the traumatic incidents they were encountering regularly at work. These extremely stressful situations were made even more overwhelming in a Covid world. In response to this, as a way to help counter the paramedics’ anxiety, Angela and the Chief of the station spearheaded bringing in a full-time emotional support dog (facility dog) for the EMS staff to provide them with calm and joyful companionship.
And these are just some examples of the many ways Angela contributes to our community, outside of her full-time job. She also volunteers on multiple boards (see below) to make sure that the voice of Moose Jaw’s citizens from all walks of life are heard and programs are being created that will help them.
It is people like Angela that make a difference to the overall quality of life in a community. Moose Jaw, with a population of approximately 34,000 people is large enough that there are people who might otherwise fall through the proverbial cracks. Thankfully we have people like Angela to stand up and advocate for them. Angela truly is a Community Hero.
Volunteer Boards
• Instructor, Advisory Committee, and, Past Chapter Coordinator and Registrar, International Trauma Life Support Saskatchewan (2014-2020)
• Special Needs Advisory Committee for the City of Moose Jaw (April 2016-December 2020)
• Chair, Heartland Hospice Moose Jaw Inc, Board Member prior to (2018-present)
• Crystal Meth Strategy Committee (2019-Present)
• Thunder Creek Rehabilitation Association Board (2019-2020)
• Saskatchewan College of Paramedics Professional Conduct Committee (2019-Present)
• Provincial EMS Community Paramedicine Metrics/Definitions Working Group, Co-Team Lead (2019-2020)
• CSA Technical Committee on Community Paramedicine (2019-Present)
