Camosun College has partnered with Vancouver-based real estate company Concert Properties to bring hands-on mobile trades training to remote BC communities. In April of 2019, Concert Properties committed to donating $250,000 over three years to allow Camosun to expand its Trades for Success program, which focuses on bringing trades education to youth, adult, and K-12 students in BC. Concert donated $90,000 of the $250,000 in 2020.
Camosun Plumbing and Pipe Trades program leader Darren Vaux says that due to COVID-19, outreach is island-focused, with the college bringing a 35-foot mobile trailer to various high-school locations on the island to teach Red Seal trades.
“There’s only about five major public post-secondaries where you can get any kind of plumbing or gas-fitting training,” says Vaux. “Unless a kid’s fortunate enough to live next to one of those post-secondaries, they’re probably never going to get an opportunity. Instead of taking a field trip, it’s us bringing the field trip to the school.”
In order to do that, there’s a lot of planning that has to happen, but Vaux says the college has planned for the worst.
“Some places don’t have power, and some of those logistics. It’s worked pretty good,” says Vaux. “We’ve got everything from generators, propane heaters when needed. Most of our tools, honestly, are cordless these days.”
Everything down to temporary lighting is all battery-run, says Vaux. Depending on how many days the trailer is on site at a location, everything from hands-on two-hour workshop activities to week-long curriculum are taught, with the aim being to help people transition into Red Seal careers, which include gas fitting, plumbing, steam fitting, fire protection sprinkler system installer, refrigeration, and air conditioning. After the COVID-19 crisis is over, the plan is to head to some remote Indigenous communities throughout the province.
“There hasn’t been the comfort level yet, with COVID,” says Vaux. “But high schools are wide open for business; they want stuff to do. They seem to be cool with it.”
Vaux says he worked all summer on getting his safety protocols together. Now, he’s fully equipped and able to go into some of those remote locations once it’s safe to do so.
“Because we are working in big spaces—wide open shops—we wear masks, disinfect everything after we leave any institution; we’ve got a chemical fogger that we can [use to] disinfect everything fairly quickly. That’s been helpful,” he says. “It does take longer. I’m not kidding. This type of training has really increased the workload, but the reception we’ve been getting is really good.”
Vaux says the high demand for the training from Camosun comes down to “state-of-the-art equipment” and the fact that they can go into remote locations where people often don’t have access to the same opportunities, many of whom are anxious to learn a trade.
“I can’t even keep up with the requests for it right now,” he says, “which is good.”