{"id":12168,"date":"2016-07-05T09:00:48","date_gmt":"2016-07-05T16:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=12168"},"modified":"2016-07-08T10:30:52","modified_gmt":"2016-07-08T17:30:52","slug":"camosun-gets-300000-for-women-in-trades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2016\/07\/05\/camosun-gets-300000-for-women-in-trades\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun gets $300,000 for women in trades"},"content":{"rendered":"

Camosun College recently received a $300,000 grant from the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation to go towards funding for women in trades at Camosun. In particular, the money will be put towards Camosun\u2019s Women in Trades Training Program and the new STEP Up for Women Initiative.<\/p>\n

According to Angus Matthews, director of the TRADEmark of Excellence Campaign (a campaign within Camosun dedicated to raising financial support to aid the growth of trade programs) Camosun is aiming to increase the number of women in trades programs to 500 by 2020. Matthews says there are currently 144 women enrolled in trades at Camosun.<\/p>\n

\u201cAcross the college, we\u2019re virtually perfectly gender balanced; it\u2019s quite amazing, actually,\u201d he says. \u201cHowever, trades is only four percent women, and that\u2019s perhaps not unexpected with the workforce arrangements for trades, but it\u2019s obviously something that\u2019s rapidly changing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Seaspan<\/a>
Seaspan CEO Jonathan Whitworth announcing the $300,000 contribution to Camosun (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Matthews says \u201cabout a third\u201d of the money will go towards \u201cadditional bursaries and support for women entering trades,\u201d while the rest will be used for career counselling, job placement, and cultivation of a mentoring program that will consist of trades graduates and female executives and leaders who are working in the trades and construction businesses.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to put together a whole mentoring group for women in trades,\u201d says Matthews. \u201cThe fund will also help us attract more female instructors in trades. Camosun also comes up really short in that regard; we have one female instructor. But that, again, is a symptom of the trades in general.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matthews says that instructors have \u201cnot only completed a formal education\u201d but also often have a number of years of experience working in their chosen trades. Matthews points out that if you take the example of a woman working in the trades now and trace her career timeline backwards, by the time she completed her education, got her Red Seal, and worked for 10 or 15 years, that\u2019s going back into \u201can era where women were almost unheard of in trades.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re lagging behind, not because of any carelessness, or lack of desire to balance it from the college\u2019s point of view, but just simply the reality of the workplace,\u201d says Matthews. \u201cSo this is all part of changing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matthews says it is \u201cabsolutely essential\u201d more students come into the trades. He says that in 2014, only 1 in 85 students coming out of high school selected the trades.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat needs to change,\u201d says Matthews. \u201cAnd the way it needs to change is by getting more underrepresented groups included in the trades, be it indigenous students or women or population sectors that are poorly represented in the trades.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matthews says it is imperative now more than ever for companies to find more workers, and find good workers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey need to cast the net wider, and certainly reaching out to women was a very obvious thing. So it\u2019s very much market-driven, not just socially important,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The investment\u2014which totalled $2.9 million and was split up between Camosun, BCIT, and UBC\u2014puts Camosun\u2019s campaign at $3.6 million, just $1.4 million away from their goal of $5 million, according to Matthews, who is confident the goal will be met by the fall. And to him, the donations represent a possibility for change.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always tell donors,\u201d he says, \u201c\u2018Do we want the college to be as good as the government can make it, or as good as the community can make it?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Camosun College recently received a $300,000 grant from the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation to go towards funding for women in trades at Camosun. In particular, the money will be put towards Camosun\u2019s Women in Trades Training Program and the new STEP Up for Women Initiative. According to Angus Matthews, director of the TRADEmark of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12168"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12172,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12168\/revisions\/12172"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}