Baker Lake program captures $223,000 in Arctic Inspiration Prize funding

The Baker Lake Community Diabetes and Nutrition program has captured one of the 2025 Arctic Inspiration Prize awards valued at $223,000.

The 2025 Arctic Inspiration Prize endowments were awarded to 12 Northern-led teams, with a total of $3.7 million distributed across various projects.

Will Baker, who is providing project management support to the Baker Lake Community Diabetes and Nutrition program, said the focus of the Baker Lake program is to reduce Type 2 diabetes prevalence and risk, through use of culturally relevant educational materials and promoting healthy eating.

Baker said two key program elements are to launch a series of recurring youth-lead cooking classes that teach the value of local country foods, such as caribou, muskox and fish.

He said the other key element is to partner with the Indigenous Diabetes Health Circle, which is an Indigenous-focused organization that tailors educational programming for different Indigenous communities.

“So that's really to create awareness of Type 2 diabetes and (provide a) message to prevent and manage the disease,” said Baker.

“About two years ago, the community received some seed funding from Pathways Indigenous Health Collaborations that is an initiative of Boehringer Ingelheim Canada Ltd, Bimaadzwin (an Indigenous advocacy group), and Indigenous health policy experts.

“This sort of allows the community to consider the situation and think about the type of program that they would want to see. For a year or so, we fine-tuned the program with the help of Pathways, which led to the partnership with the Indigenous Diabetes Health Circle.

“So, in terms of program activities, they haven't really got off the ground yet, which is where the Arctic Inspiration Prize comes in.”

Baker said with the financial support from the Arctic Inspiration Prize, the project will now be able to get up and running.

He said the program is, partially, led by local individuals who are doing this on a voluntary basis, so he's helping them with some of the co-ordination and run-of-the-mill project management activities, just to take that burden off.

“One of the main issues is that a lot of the good work that's going on in some of these smaller communities in Nunavut is being undertaken by volunteers.

“So, one of the things that the Arctic Inspiration funding will do is allow us to create a paid position to, sort of, co-ordinate the program. That's so important because it will alleviate some of the burden that falls on the volunteers and also create a job.”