{"id":21125,"date":"2021-06-01T09:00:51","date_gmt":"2021-06-01T16:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=21125"},"modified":"2021-05-31T11:22:03","modified_gmt":"2021-05-31T18:22:03","slug":"donation-helps-women-and-indigenous-students-in-trades-at-camosun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2021\/06\/01\/donation-helps-women-and-indigenous-students-in-trades-at-camosun\/","title":{"rendered":"Donation helps women and Indigenous students in trades at Camosun"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Camosun College is receiving a $444,000 donation from the Dennis & Phyllis Washington Foundation in partnership with Seaspan Shipyards. Each year for the next three years, $100,000 of the donation will go toward new and already established scholarships and bursaries for women and Indigenous trades students at Camosun. The remaining $144,000 will go toward marine equipment such as welding booths and virtual training consoles. The money will also go toward creating a micro-credential in marine welding at the college.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Camosun vice president of partnerships Geoff Wilmshurst says the micro-credential course, which is still being finalized, will provide training that is marine specific, and students will learn to work at the Camosun Coastal Centre or in the tight quarters of a ship as opposed to the parameters of a trades shop on campus.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe haven\u2019t actually got into the nitty gritty of developing a course yet, but we will do that soon, and now that we\u2019ve been gifted this equipment, that will allow us to be able to start working towards the development of a particular course,\u201d says Wilmshurst.<\/p>\n

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Camosun College and Seaspan Shipyards representatives (photo by Allan Shook\/Camosun College AV Services).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Wilmshurst says that the Dennis & Phyllis Washington Foundation has been a \u201chuge supporter of Camosun over many years\u201d and that the college is really excited to receive the donation, which is part of the foundation\u2019s larger Diversifying the Tools for Success initiative.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThis just adds to what has been an incredible legacy of gift giving from both organizations,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Wilmshurst says that having virtual training consoles means students will have opportunities to learn welding without having to use traditional welding-booth arrangements: they could take a couple hours off work, go up to the Camosun Coastal Centre and study for the micro-credential, then go back to work afterwards.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThere\u2019ll be an opportunity, for example, for workers who are in the marine industry, especially down [at the shipyards], to be able to book off the job for a couple of hours, get some specific field training, and then go back to the job after,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Wilmshurst calls funding for student essentials\u2014food, work clothes, and textbooks\u2014critically important, especially for those who need extra supports.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe have marginalized groups in our society that really need those extra supports in order to be able to take the time to get the training that they need in order to, kind of, move up,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Wilmshurst uses access to adequate childcare for women in trades as an example of the type of essential support offered to students through the donation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWithout the ability to have access to childcare and have the money to access childcare, they simply can\u2019t step away from their household duties in order to be able to get the training and then move on into a career,\u201d says Wilmshurst. \u201cFood security is another one\u2014clothing and equipment is hugely expensive and there\u2019s lots of folks in our community who don\u2019t have the money to access that without some help. This is really important stuff. It\u2019s something that Camosun has been doing for a while. I\u2019m really, really happy that the Washington Foundation and Seaspan understood the need for that kind of support.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Wilmshurst says the college hasn\u2019t crunched the numbers to know exactly how many students the donation will help, but it \u201cwill certainly be in the hundreds.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI would expect that if it\u2019s successful, we\u2019ll have opportunities to do more fundraising towards this,\u201d he says, \u201cwhether it be from the Washington Foundation or other organizations.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Camosun College is receiving a $444,000 donation from the Dennis & Phyllis Washington Foundation in partnership with Seaspan Shipyards. Each year for the next three years, $100,000 of the donation will go toward new and already established scholarships and bursaries for women and Indigenous trades students at Camosun. The remaining $144,000 will go toward marine […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21126,"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":[9,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21125","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=21125"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21128,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21125\/revisions\/21128"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}