As an organization, we seek to empower individuals from within the communities that we work with the tools to improve their socioeconomic well-being. Here we help members of all communities, but with a focus on marginalized segments especially at-risk youth, newcomers to Canada, women and single parents, Aboriginal / First Nations people, and unemployed people seeking employment.
We quickly found that the group had unique challenges that we had not faced when training more experienced employees. We found that the job presented challenges to the youth that we didn’t have the understanding to address well. So, while we had the good intention at an upper management level to help marginalized youth enter the workforce, the intention alone was not sufficient to ensure their success. We identified a need for a dedicated individual to focus on helping the new employees and students Interns to address their individual obstacles – such as lacking the confidence to learn new skills, low self-esteem, and limited communication skills – so that once the hard skills are introduced they can transition with confidence and be effective contributors to the workforce should it with NEXIM or elsewhere in the job market. Our goal is to give our interns both the hard and soft skills to become successful in whatever career they choose to pursue.