Last Friday April 17, twenty students from Don Ross Secondary filed into a Squamish studio and spent the day reflecting on themselves and their wider community .
They worked through a workbook, carefully crafted by years of expertise, and vetted by teachers to comply with the regular school curriculum. Students answered questions like what do I stand for, drew self portraits, defined community, and worked on project management for a school leadership club project.
This program is part of the non-profit Passion to Lead started by now Squamish local, Loretta Cella. Cella, who holds a master’s degree in organizational leadership, and a child and youth care counselling diploma from Douglas College, ran the worldwide non-profit for over a decade. She stepped back when she became a mother, and started Breathworks Studio here in Squamish.
It was through talking with clients about her past experiences running the non-profit, that she was convinced to start it back up again, but this time with a more local approach. The day with Don Ross students was one of its first major programs back in action.
“How do we help kids to feel seen, to be heard, and to be held? That’s not just on kids. It’s not just on parents, it’s not just on teachers, it’s not on the government. It’s everybody’s responsibility.”
Over the course of a full day, the students moved through a condensed version of Cella’s flagship curriculum, the Elements of Success, a seven-week program designed to help young people understand who they are, what holds them back, and what they’re capable of contributing to their communities.
One of the session’s exercises involved small pieces of paper Cella called bricks. She asked students to write down privately everything they believed they couldn’t do or weren’t good enough to be. The things collected quietly over years, the comment a classmate made, the time they felt left out, or moments they decided they weren’t smart or funny or worthy enough.
“Every time something happens, somebody makes fun of you, you don’t have what other kids have, it’s like putting a brick in your backpack,” Cella told them. “Eventually that backpack gets so heavy you can’t walk.”
Then she asked them to flip the ‘bricks’ over and write what would be there instead, if the weight were gone. Then she had them rip the bricks into pieces, smaller and smaller, before collecting the scraps to burn at home.
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By the end of the day, the students closed out hours of reflection, drawing, and discussion by putting on headsets for an impromptu sound bath session, the students insisted on.
“I started with a very chill breath thing to get in your body and feel that connection… After they were like, ‘we want California Girls’ and we danced it out,” Cella said.
Cella has been working with young people for over twenty years, including running international programs that reached more than 6,000 youth across 14 countries before she stepped back. When she opened the wellness studio the same people who convinced her to start it back up, offered to help bring the charity back to life.
The current focus runs along two tracks. The BeWell program is aimed at elementary-aged students, up to Grade 4, bringing short daily exercises into classrooms: movement, regulated breathing, and simple art activities timed to the natural stress points of a school day, before class begins, after recess, and before home time. They started a pilot in schools in West Vancouver and Squamish’s Garibaldi Highlands, and Cella has since trained some teachers in the district to deliver it themselves.
Elements of Success is aimed at older students, particularly those navigating the Grade 7 to 9 transition, and covers deeper questions of identity, values, community connection, and project-based leadership. Previous participants have created rap videos, art installations, and community projects.
“In a matter of a week, watching kids who have no voice, no confidence, go to thinking ‘I can actually contribute something powerful and positive into the community,'” she says. “That’s the whole thing.”
Cella’s near term goal is to train 100 teachers over the next 12 months at $250 per four-hour session, so they can deliver the material in their own classrooms. At roughly 20 students per class, that would translate to around 2,000 children reached. Cella also wants to bring education assistants into the training, noting that EAs often work one-on-one with the kids who most need these tools.
Cella said that about one in five children in Canada has a diagnosed mental health condition, a figure Cella returns to often. She said that many ADHD symptoms closely resemble those of a dysregulated nervous system, and that the breathing and regulation work she does with kids through programming, and with adults in her private coaching practice, helps to produce more focus, more flexibility, and less irritability across the board.
“The more regulated kids are, connected to their breath, the more they’re aware of what they’re actually capable of in the world versus what they think they’re capable of,” Cella said. “That’s where we start to see real change.”
Cella said they are looking for community support, and anyone who wants to help out, as a board member, volunteer or community sponsor can reach out at admin@passiontolead.org. Donations can also be made here.
