Partnerships

The Pirurvik Preschool in Pond Inlet provides early childhood education (ECE) that is child centered and based on the Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ) principles and is enriched through the use of Montessori materials. The team aims to improve the social well-being of children, families and communities and will undoubtedly positively impact the lives of hundreds of young children and their families by providing a positive first experience with education. Pirurvik Preschool is actively creating environments that speak to the communities’ own needs and values by reflecting Inunnguiniq practices in these positive educational experiences for children, and their families.

Food security in Nunavut is a real and alarming faced by all residents of the territory. The Mittima Food Bank, based in Pond Inlet, provides a grocery drop to over 400 families every two weeks. This program puts several healthy meals on the tables of families in need.

The Elders Tea is a community-led weekly gathering for elders where they can come together, enjoy a meal, tea, and activities. The atmosphere of the gathering combined with the access to country food, such as char, seal, whale and caribou, makes this a positive and powerful recurring event for the elders of the community.

Incorporated as a non-profit, community-based Inuit organization in 1997, Ilisaqsivik Society strives to support community development and wellness in a way that maintains respect for traditional Inuit teachings and learning, and is accountable to the community. Founded, led, and staffed by Inuit residents of Clyde River, the society offers a wide range of culturally based programs that support the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs of all community residents from infants to Elders. Ilisaqsivik Society serves many communities by dispatching Inuit counselors to communities in crisis, and their land-based programs will soon be part of a territory-wide rehabilitation program.

Since 2011, Quark Expeditions supported the South Georgia Heritage Trust (SGHT) and the Friends of South Georgia Island (FOSGI) to deliver a multi-year, multi-million-dollar Habitat Restoration project on South Georgia. On 8 May 2018, SGHT announced that the project had successfully eradicated rats and mice from South Georgia, freeing South Georgia’s birds and wildlife from over two centuries of predation. Already there have been extraordinary signs of wildlife recovery, with South Georgia pipits and South Georgia pintails being witnessed in greater numbers than ever before in living memory.

To ensure the legacy of the Habitat Restoration project, robust biosecurity measures are being implemented to ensure that rodents never return. Quark Expeditions supports a rodent dog detection team from Working Dogs for Conservation (WD4C) that aim to protect the native flora and fauna on South Georgia from alien invasive species.

Quark Expeditions is a long-time supporter of Penguin Watch, a citizen science initiative seeking to find solutions to the present data gaps, using cameras and genetic analysis. Together, these approaches have resulted in an integrated monitoring network that has the capacity to provide data to policy-makers on areas particularly sensitive to fishing and human disturbance.

2019 was the first year that Penguin Watch used drones for counting, and the results were spectacular. The tool allows them to count colonies with less disturbance (often the penguins can’t even see the drone) and are invaluable on short visits where they otherwise wouldn’t have time to complete the count. The use of drones also opened new study opportunities, for example, tracing the highway that penguins use to commute between the nest and the sea between successive years.

Polar Bears International (PBI) is dedicated to the worldwide conservation of polar bears and their sea-ice homes through research, education, action programs and stewardship. PBI is considered the world’s foremost authority on polar bears.

Part of the proceeds from the charity auction were directed to PBI’s Polar Bear Den Monitoring Project, which is a collaboration between PBI, the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research, and the Norwegian Polar Institute. This year, they set out to remotely observe polar bear family groups during their den emergence period using special solar and wind-powered cameras to record HD video and still images. These cameras were deployed in two locations, one northeast of Longyearbyen, the other on the Northern part of Spitsbergen.

Quark Expeditions has been a supporter of Seabird Watch, a citizen science initiative aimed at monitoring seabird populations across the globe, since its inception. Built from the successful toolkit developed by Penguin Watch, Seabird Watch uses time-lapse camera technology to monitor seabird colonies in difficult to access parts of the world, including Svalbard, Iceland, and Greenland in the Arctic. Members of the Seabird Watch team travelled with Quark Expeditions on board Ocean Adventurer to Svalbard to access cameras, change batteries, and collect the images that were taken.