{"id":18857,"date":"2020-01-22T09:00:54","date_gmt":"2020-01-22T17:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=18857"},"modified":"2020-01-22T11:39:44","modified_gmt":"2020-01-22T19:39:44","slug":"camosun-college-and-vancouver-island-university-partner-for-women-in-trades-training-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2020\/01\/22\/camosun-college-and-vancouver-island-university-partner-for-women-in-trades-training-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun College and Vancouver Island University partner for Women in Trades Training program"},"content":{"rendered":"

Camosun College has been delivering Women in Trades Training (WITT) for almost 10 years and has sponsored over 700 WITT participants. Camosun has recently expanded its WITT reach, partnering with Vancouver Island University (VIU) to offer the program to students outside of Victoria.<\/p>\n

Camosun WITT program coordinator Sarah-Jayne Roe is enthusiastic about the partnership with VIU and believes that it will offer options to women all over Vancouver Island.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe just decided that we wanted to expand the portfolio,\u201d says Roe. \u201cThe chair of trades development and special projects, Olaf Nielsen, and I, we wanted to expand it and reach more people, get more people involved. It\u2019s been so successful the last 10 years that it just seemed right. Now we can reach the whole south of the island.\u201d<\/p>\n

Camosun receives WITT funding through the provincial government\u2019s Industry Training Authority, which sponsors people to go into foundations programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cFoundations is between six and 10 months long,\u201d says Roe. \u201cThey come to the school completely green; by the time they leave, they will have the technical training for the level 1, and some work-based training hours. Another sponsorship we do is a women-only dedicated cohort, the Trade Sampling program, so they can try all the different trades in the college, and also now VIU.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A Camosun trades student hard at work at the Interurban campus (photo by Camosun College).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Roe says that there has been a slow increase of women entering the trades, and she is hopeful that the partnership with VIU will help.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the biggest things in my role as the coordinator is to encourage women to network and to mentor,\u201d says Roe. \u201cTo mentor each other, to peer support, to create a community with women in the trades. There hasn\u2019t been a lot of women in the trades; the number is low.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roe says that the partnership with VIU will include program replication.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPart of what I do is have women in trades speaker meetings, which is something that VIU is now replicating,\u201d says Roe. \u201cSo, what we do here, we do there. We do mentor, as well as informal mentoring\u2014we do breakfast every month where we invite all the sponsored women in the college, and we also try to invite as many of the others that aren\u2019t sponsored as we can\u2026 Not all women need the sponsorship but it\u2019s still important to make them part of the community that we are creating here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roe believes that this partnership might also make it an easier process with the barriers that women face every day in the trades.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the barriers that women face is, obviously, going into a male-dominated trade,\u201d says Roe. \u201cThey may not have had the experience when they were younger, like the men have had\u2014a dad or uncle showing them what trades are about. That is one of the biggest barriers, as well as financial.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roe says that the WITT application process is more of a conversation than an interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just have to make sure that they know what they are going into,\u201d says Roe. \u201cThat\u2019s what is so good about the trade sampling program. They might come in and not quite know what they want to do, which trade they want to go into. In a trade sampling program, you can try all the trades that we have. We also do about six tours in the trade sampling program. This means they\u2019ll go to construction sites, they\u2019ll go to Seaspan, BC Ferries, some of the smaller companies as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roe says that the most important thing for women to remember is to not be afraid to go for it and, if they are interested, to apply for the program.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are so many women that have thought about it but never looked into it,\u201d says Roe. \u201cDon\u2019t be afraid to give us a call. Come in and go on a tour, talk to other women, come to one of our breakfasts. There is always so much happening.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Camosun College has been delivering Women in Trades Training (WITT) for almost 10 years and has sponsored over 700 WITT participants. Camosun has recently expanded its WITT reach, partnering with Vancouver Island University (VIU) to offer the program to students outside of Victoria. Camosun WITT program coordinator Sarah-Jayne Roe is enthusiastic about the partnership with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18921,"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":[13,246],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-january-22-2020"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18857","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=18857"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18859,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18857\/revisions\/18859"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}