Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Skills Work! in Nipawin

On Monday our team headed up to Nipawin for another day of trades activities, which took place at a hall in Red Earth Cree Nation.  We had 42 young women ages 14 to 16 join us from neighboring communities including Red Earth Cree Nation, Cumberland House First Nation, Shoal Lake First Nation, and from the Nipawin Oasis Community Center.  Joining our team of role models was Tanya Kuziak, from Kenora, one of SaskWITT’s members and a plumber recently initiated into the United Alliance (UA) of Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 179.  Tanya received an award earlier this month at the apprenticeship banquet for women for achieving the highest mark on her IP exam in the province for 2012.  Congrats Tanya and thanks for all your smiles and help with the event!

Accompanying us from Regina was Liana Wolf Ear from the Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technology (SIIT) and Construction Careers Regina.  SIIT works closely with industry partners, related organizations, government, and others to provide relevent Trades & Industrial (T&I) programming for First Nations students.  SIIT connects training program graduates and others seeking employment to jobs through the Industrial Career Centers. The T&I department manages seven Career Centers in Regina, Saskatoon, Prince Albert, La Ronge, Yorkton, Meadow Lake and North Battleford.  Fifteen percent of the students at SIIT are women.  Liana told the girls, 

“Use what you learn today for your future.  When you succeed, we all succeed.”

Thanks for joining us Liana and sharing your message with the girls!

For more information about SIIT go to: http://www.siit.sk.ca/

We had a busy, educational day filled with hands-on activities and the girls got a taste of how much fun working with tools, planning projects, and collaborating as a team can be.  

We are grateful to the following individuals for their help in making this event possible:

Corrine Favel from Cumberland House First Nation.  

Joy Hanson, our seriously awesome “go-to” person in Nipawin who is Chair of the Board for Nipawin Oasis Community Center.  Joy was busy coordinating in Nipawin for us, getting girls signed up for the event, and organizing food for the event, which was prepared by the Nipawin Oasis Community Center.  Thanks for all your hard work; we know you were juggling a lot for this event!  Joy also shared her lovely cabin on Tobin Lake with a few of us on Monday night.  I think that was the comfiest, best sleep I’ve had in a long time Joy!  Thank You!  

Senator Phillip Head from Red Earth Cree Nation who translated Liana Wolf Ear’s message into Cree and helped judge our Junk Yard Wars Competition.  Thanks for spending your afternoon with us Phillip!

A great big Thanks to all the young women who participated in the conference!  There are lots of trades just waiting for you when you finish school!

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

La Ronge - Tour End -

Our final day of the tour has come and gone.  We wrapped up with one last day working with young women in La Ronge at the Elk’s Hall.  We had two more role models join us - Lori Bell, from La Ronge once again, and Denise Bougie, an electrician from Uranium City was able to make it down for the day. 

The Team!  Our Role Models (left to right): Denise Bougie, Rhealene Wagner, Valerie Overend, Devin West, Pat Fayant, Diane West, Lori Bell and Andrea Dorosh.

Participants were from La Ronge as well as Sandy Bay and Montreal Lake.  This time we had women between the ages of 14 and 25.   We spent more time talking about apprenticeship and all of the different trades that exist. 

There are currently 47 designated trades and 23 sub-trades to choose from in Saskatchewan.  Not only do these trades need more women, for some of the trades the demand for workers here in the province is extremely high.  This is a great time to pursue a career in the trades, and there is lots of support should you decide to travel down that road.  For a comprehensive list and description of these trades as well as information about apprenticeship, visit the Saskatchewan Apprenticeship and Trade Certification Commission: 

We had a guest, Glen Strong, join us in the afternoon from Points Athabasca, a northern contracting partnership that provides a variety of building services here in the province.  Mr. Strong had a positive message for the group about the opportunity they have to work, train, become skilled and make great money here in the province, and about what, as an employer, he is looking for in a worker.  Thanks for the visit Glen!

Final Junk Yard Wars Competition with the judges: Sylvia Harris, Clarence Neault and Glen Strong

It was another great day filled to the brim with activities and information, and smiles all-around!

For more information about career services in the North or to follow-up on a specific trade, visit KCDC (Keewatin Career Development Corporation) at their website:  

http://www.kcdc.ca/ 

and/or their facebook page: 

https://www.facebook.com/KeewatinCareerDevelopmentCorporation

A great big Thank You to all the funders and sponsors 
whose generous support made this event possible!


Special Thanks goes out to Clarence Neault from KCDC (Keewatin Career Development Corporation), Sylvia Harris from NAC (Northern Apprenticeship Committee), Marion Lebell from NLSD (Northern Lights School Division, and Russ Wanner from the Twin Lakes School in Buffalo Narrows for their local recruitment, organizing and help in making this event possible!

We had so much help from countless individuals throughout the duration of the tour, and while we can’t name everyone here, we want you to know that we really appreciate everything you did for us and that we couldn’t have done it without you!  Thanks so much!

Last but not least,

Thanks to all the young women who participated in the tour!  We had a wonderful time getting to know you and working with you and hope to hear from you or see you again at future events!  We want you to know that there is tons of information available to you and that you have all kinds of support should you decide to pursue work in the trades (which we hope you will!).

 Later this month our team heads to Nipawin to spend a day with young women in and around the community.


Thursday, November 1, 2012

Skills Work Tour

Buffalo Narrows ~

We are now over half-way through our Northern Tour, and what a fantastic journey so far, complete with one epic road story (to come later)!  We arrived in Buffalo Narrows last Sunday, for most of us the farthest north in Saskatchewan we’ve ever traveled, and set up in the gym at the Lakeview Recreation Center.  When I peered out the hotel window that night, I kept thinking we had fast-forwarded to January.  It was, of course, snowing... again!  Apparently winter doesn’t mess around up here.



The plan for Buffalo Narrows was 2 days – Monday and Tuesday, back to back.  Same program.  We had girls come from Ile a la Crosse, Clearwater, Beauval, Pine House, Patuanak, Birch Narrows, Dillon, Island Lake, and of course, Buffalo Narrows.  On a side note, it was really cool and worth mentioning that for many of the girls who attended over the 2 days, English was their second language with Dene Suline their primary spoken language.


It was great to see the girls’ focus and determination with the try-a-trade stations.  15 minutes goes by quickly when you’re hard at work!  The stations have been a big hit so far, the girls are realizing that the trades can be a lot of fun, working with their hands, putting things together, finding that creativity and even art can be a big part of the trades.  I use the expression ‘crafting on a really big scale’ when I’m talking to the girls about my experience of carpentry.  When I first started doing carpentry work, it hardly mattered that a lot of the work was new to me because I had so much prior experience working with my hands, paying attention to detail, taking wire and pliers and beads for instance, and turning them into earrings.  I found I was able to transfer all kinds of skills from other areas of my life.  It’s important for women to understand this, and to know that learning a trade is just like learning anything else, and is certainly not limited to one gender or the other.  And in fact, I have worked for employers now who absolutely, hands down want to hire women because they are often times harder working than their male co-workers, and because their work is consistently of such high quality.  I had a girl at my table who loves to paint – I asked her if she knew that there’s a trade all about painting.  It’s about looking at what you love to do and finding ways to do that at work, so not only are you fulfilled but you’re being paid well at the same time.  I don’t think young women realize that there is a whole world of trades just waiting to be discovered!

hard at work!
The Junk Yard Wars continues to be a big hit with the girls.  I love watching the process unfold – the girls are timid at the beginning and there’s a lot of frustrations, often including an exasperated “this is impossible” or “I give up” and slowly as the clock ticks by some ideas start to come to life, the volume in the room starts to elevate, and all of sudden there’s a team working together on a project, and there’s excitement as their final products take shape and as they do their first trial run!  Being able to witness this transformation has been so rewarding for me.   Thanks girls, it was a lot of fun working with you!




 “I like how the trades are all different from one another, and most of all meeting new people and sharing new ideas.” - participant feedback

1st place!


   Valerie Overend, our fearless leader and tour host, giving away some seriously awesome safety equipment!


At the beginning of this post I promised one ‘epic road story’, so here it is.  What happens when a road is so icy that your front-wheel drive vehicle, loaded to the max (in the back of course), can’t actually make it up to the top?  Well, if you don’t already have some scene playing out in your head, let me paint one for you...  It looks something like this.  Driver tries to back up (down the hill) so as to have another go at the slope.  Vehicle, powerless under the evil unforgiving influence of ice, betrays driver, surrenders to ice and slides across the road sideways and into the ditch.  Thankfully we were spared in that only the back end of the vehicle was off the road.  This however, was a double-edged sword as we were jutting out into oncoming traffic right at a bend in the road on what could have easily doubled as a skating rink.  Luckily, we were after all 6 tough-as-nails tradeswomen and managed, with a combination of left-over concrete from the try-a-trade station and a little 'human ingenuity’ to miraculously survive and escape the icy hill of doom!  

'human ingenuity'

We are all safe and sound, back in La Ronge and set up for our final day of the tour tomorrow.  I’m hiding out in my cozy hotel room from the cold, because go figure, it’s storming again. 
Stay tuned for our final leg of the tour!  Who knows what adventure I’ll be sharing next!