Pamela
Glode Desrochers

Executive Director, Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre, Halifax, CA

Pamela Glode Desrochers has been the Executive Director of the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre for over 9 years, working with the Centre for over 27 years and an advocate for strengthen urban and rural Indigenous communities. 

The Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Society is a non-profit, board governed organization that currently operates 40+ programs. It is one of 125 Friendship Centre’s across Canada and opened its doors on September 17th, 1973. The Mission of the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Society is to provide structured, social-based programing for urban Indigenous people while serving as a focal point for the urban Indigenous community to gather for a variety of community functions and events. 

Pamela’s mandate as the Executive director of the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre is to provide quality structured social based programming to urban Indigenous people with a focus on reducing poverty and crime, health, housing, homelessness, justice and the promotion of personal and community health and well-being. She has a strong focus on the development of a new Friendship Centre that will provide opportunities for the urban Indigenous community to become self-sustainable. 

Pamela has been attributed with increasing the number of programs and services offered at the Friendship Centre in the last few years from 9 and to 40+ programs which includes an employment and training program, housing program, several literacy programs and a youth program to name a few. 

Pamela believes effective communication is the cornerstone to any successful initiative and is committed to building partnerships with all stakeholders (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) on behalf of the Friendship Centre to ensure the quality of life for urban indigenous people is improved. 

Currently she sits on the Board of Directors of the National Association of friendship Centers. 

In June 2017, Pamela received the Governor General’s award: Sovereign’s Medal for Volunteers in Ottawa for Outstanding Indigenous Leadership. 

“For me, I believe that in the organization, the friendship centre, and our community, we have to start doing things together, not in silos, not separately, and not in Ottawa, but together. We talk about a national strategy. We talk about all these things. The reality is that we have to start doing things together. I don't mean at each other. I mean together. We need to have that honest truthful conversation, and humility has to play a role in that.”