Jordan Paul-Fontaine
JEDI has formed a partnership with an online database called Working Warriors, a user friendly system designed to connect a growing Indigenous workforce to employment opportunities across Canada.
As a result of this partnership, data collection has taken place in 7 First Nations communities in New Brunswick. We catch up with Jordan Paul-Fontaine of Woodstock who gave us an update on the project in his community. He talks about setting up Working Warriors including some of the challenges and the next steps below.
Setting up Working Warriors in Woodstock.
“When I [Jordan] first brought the project to the community, a lot of people were excited because we hired someone from our own community and she knew a lot of people so it was easy to get out there and get that initial group of people to sign up.”
Some of the challenges he faced.
“What was difficult was that people have been surveyed a lot in our community. There have been so many databases and people haven’t seen results. “
How to move forward.
“I think for us, the biggest thing we need to do is to show at least one or two people actually get a meaningful career out of submitting their information into the database. I know in our community word of mouth is a lot stronger than a success story especially when it’s your cousin, your brother, or someone in your community. I think for us we’re excited to use the database to be able to create opportunities and relationships with local employers and employers in other provinces. We’ve never had that before.”
How to encourage more people to sign up for Working Warriors.
“One thing that we did that was exciting was we added the Working Warriors survey to the ASETS (Aboriginal Skills and Employment Strategy) program and that’s part of the application process now. People have the option to enter the database. We’re hoping to garner more that way now that the initial recruitment is over but eight weeks was definitely not enough time to get everything done. We’re trying to keep it going and once people see something meaningful come out of it I know that you’ll have people coming in saying they need to get in on this. How do I be a part of it?”
For more information on Working Warriors and how to get it into your community, contact Mike Hennessey at JEDI: Mike.Hennessey@jedinb.ca