A new partnership between Vancouver Island University, School District 47 and Career Link is going to make it easier for women in Powell River to find work in the skilled trades.
Last month the Industry Training Authority (ITA), a provincial government agency mandated to help promote trades education, announced funding to help women entering the skilled trades. The Powell River campus of Vancouver Island University (VIU) received $157,100 for the pilot program and hired Tim Thomas to run it. The initiative will support 16 women to go through the six-week program and will provide participants with essential skills development, job readiness assistance, trades training and individualized follow up support.
“A lot of women go into the job market after they’ve taken these courses at other schools like UBC [University of BC] Okanagan,” said Thomas. “They’re more successful than what they would have been because they can say they’ve taken basics of carpentry and the basics of welding.”
Each week of the program will explore a different trade. The program will help introduce what each trade is about and at the end of the six weeks participants will either be able to enter into a trade school or look for other non-apprenticeship work in the trades.
“It’s for women who would like to explore if they would like to become a journeyman tradesperson in any of the ITA trades out there,” said Lyn Adamson, program director at Career Link. “They could explore a variety of trades, anything from the traditional welding, carpentry, plumbing to the non-traditional metal work and instrument technology.”
To qualify for one of the 16 open spaces, women should not currently be on Employment Insurance (EI) or have had an EI claim for the past three years or taken maternity leave for the past five years.
Adamson said that in the current labour market it is getting more difficult to get unskilled labour jobs, and due to baby boomers retiring, there is an increasing need for skilled tradespeople.
“We understand that we’re going to be in a tradesperson shortage in no time and we’re already in a shortage in many of the industrial and construction-related trades,” she said. “They [ITA] are trying to tap into less explored markets to fill that demand for workers. In this particular program they put out a call for both women to join trades and another call in the spring for first nations people or visible minorities or immigrants because they have not traditionally been in the skilled trades workforce at the same level as other workers.”
For more information about the program, readers can contact Career Link at 604.485.7958 or VIU 604.485.2878.
