Ainsley grew up in Southern Ontario Suburbia, until escaping to the west coast ten years ago. After taking care of that pesky high school diploma on Vancouver Island, she spent a year pursuing theatre at the University of Victoria, before deciding to try travelling out instead. After an amazing three months volunteering and teaching in Ghana she moved to the big city of Vancouver, and promptly had no idea what to do with her life. She did however, discover the joys of great friends, bike riding everywhere, cherry blossoms, and East Van queer volunteer-run dance parties. Frustrated with university, and more frustrated with the apparent lack of opportunities available without a university education, she embarked on the quest of qualification sans degree, and focused on figuring out how to build her life the way she wanted to look. In that quest she came upon YouthCO and immediately fell in love. During her time volunteering on the Theatre Troupe and Speaker’s Bureau she found an amazing outlet for some other loves—gardening, environmentalism, and social justice—through an internship with the Environmental Youth Alliance. After receiving great mentorship from the folks at EYA as well as YouthCO, she decided to apply for the Peer Facillitator position in the fall of 2009, and a few days later received one of the best phone calls of her life.
In her role as peer facilitator, Ainsley loves finding different ways of sharing information and getting to speak with youth about the things that don’t always gets spoken about. She is constantly amazed by participants insights, questions and strength. Outside of work you will find her in a park soaking up any sun Vancouver has to offer, swimming in the ocean, and being amazed by really beautiful things all the time.
