Meet our Grantees

Ain Dah Yung Center provides culturally responsive supportive housing and wrap-around services for unaccompanied homeless and runaway American Indian youth.

Sheri, Nindaanisequay:

I’m Sheri Riemers, Nindaanisequay, I’m a member of the White Earth Nation of Ojibwe. I am the executive director here at Ain Dah Yung Center.

Ain Dah Yung means our home in Ojibwe. And when that young person comes in, when they enter into our emergency shelter, the first thing we do is make sure that they’re comforted and that they know they’re welcomed.

We realize that it’s gonna take anywhere from three months to two years to get a young person where they believe in themselves, to really instill their self value, self worth, and getting them into employment, higher education, all of the above. And we wanna make sure that our youth and families are enveloped around traditional and cultural practices. 

You know, through activities like regalia making, helping them understand our sacred medicines, and taking them out and gathering those medicines. Bringing elders and community wisdom keepers. We’ll bring them in regularly to work with the young people and our staff to really sew up that social fabric.

Oftentimes funders like Constellation can mean the difference of pay equity for staff and being able to reduce the long-term effect of turnover. You know, our young people wanna hear the stories of the staff and be able to connect those stories and realize that we’re no different.

How Constellation has supported Ain Dah Yung Center is so much bigger than we ever imagined and we’re deeply appreciative to the team that we had.

Learn more about Constellation’s grantee partners at constellationfund.org/grantees.