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WATCH: $800k for youth job training

Federal cabinet minister Carla Qualtrough made the announcement at the YMCA of Okanagan in Penticton
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Minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities Carla Qualtrough (right) speaks with YMCA of Okanagan chair Joni Matherell after announcing $800,000 for the group’s Jumpstart Employment Essentials Penticton project. Dustin Godfrey/Western News

The federal government is adding some funds to a program intended to help youth get into the workforce.

“With the skills link funding, 108 youth in the Pneticton area are learning valuable job skills like how to prepare for interviews, job searching and networking,” said Minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities Carla Qualtrough.

Qualtrough was in town on an Okanagan tour, having announced nearly $750,000 in funding for various projects in Vernon on Thursday.

Friday’s funding announcement is to the tune of $800,000 for the YMCA of Okanagan’s Jumpstart Employment Essentials Penticton project.

“So that 108 young people can get the skills they need to get the jobs they deserve and work and get a paycheck and contribute,” Qualtrough said in Penticton’s YMCA of Okanagan location downtown Friday.

The project helps local youth develop skills like critical thinking, problem solving, improving resumes and cover letters and searching for jobs.

“There’s an opportunity to create a relationship with employers and subsidize a work experience, an eight-week work experience,” said Robert Bryce, senior management of employment programs at YMCA of Okanagan.

“While they’re in class, we give them a living allowance so that they’re sustainable while they’re in the program and able to come with lunches and access transportation.”

Qualtrough says this kind of program can help slow a process that has Penticton’s average age going up and its young population going down.

“We know there will be a labour shortage. If there isn’t one, there will be, as our population ages, and, quite frankly, as more retirees pick communities like Penticton,” Qualtrough said. “We are going to need young people who are skilled and able to work filling these jobs. It’s a really important component in our economic future that we invest in these young people.

“And, quite frankly, this is an investment. We know that if we invest in these young people now, it will return 10-fold, 100-fold.”

Since the program started about 10 years ago, Bryce says some of the earliest entrants into the program have stayed around Penticton and started some families of their own in the city.

“If we continue to deliver this program in the future, I think we’re going to see some of their children start to access this program,” he said. “So, I think it’s definitely had an impact on the local economy that way.”

Beyond programs for employment, Bryce says there is also a need to ensure those youth are keeping a roof over their heads at the same time as gaining employment — which can be challenging in Penticton, with a vacancy rate that regularly hovers below one per cent.

“It’s well-known and documented through studies that people, from a needs perspective, have to have housing addressed in order to be in a good place to be looking for employment,” Bryce said.

“I think they are linked, and I think those discussions are happening at high levels both in Canada and with the provincial government. So, I think we’re headed in the right direction with those kind of conversations.”


@dustinrgodfrey
dustin.godfrey@pentictonwesternnews.com
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