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THE CPRNW PILOT

Prior to its extension, the pilot project involved eight service provider organizations across Canada, implementing 11 interventions based on four service delivery models. The overall goal of each model is to support racialized newcomer women in their successful integration into the Canadian labour market. The models differ by their target population (e.g., women with different skill/language levels and different initial distances from the labour market) as well as by the program activities involved. The models aim to address some of the common barriers racialized newcomer women face in their search for employment and in job retention.

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The Supporting Apprentices with Learning Disabilities initiative was a collaboration between SkillPlan and the Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC), with funding support from the Government of Canada’s Skills for Success program. This project aimed to explore, develop, and evaluate support systems for pre-apprentices and apprentices with learning disabilities and differences succeed in skilled trades training.

The initiative successfully supported 1,459 participants, most of whom reported greater awareness of their learning needs, a strong sense of belonging in the trades, and a commitment to continue their apprenticeships. Trainers also felt well-equipped to support diverse learners. The flexible support model, based on the Universal Design for Learning (UDL), created inclusive and empowering environments.

Key lessons emphasized the value of early stakeholder engagement and the need for broader systems change, including workplace supports and employer involvement. The model’s success highlights its potential for broader adoption and long-term impact across apprenticeship systems.

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This report presents 18-month impacts from the Community Employment Innovation Project (CEIP), a study of a program designed to encourage the longer-term employability of participants while supporting local community development in areas of continuing high unemployment. Communities were challenged to utilize the social economy as a source of jobs, which would provide participants with opportunities for developing skills and social capital.

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Based on data collected 40 months after the enrolment of participants, Improving skills, networks, and livelihoods through community-based work: Three-year impacts of the Community Employment Innovation Project shows that CEIP led to substantially higher rates of full-time employment, increased earnings; and reduced receipt of EI and IA benefits, all of which were sustained for the three years of program eligibility. Participants also reported improved well-being, with reductions in the extent and severity of poverty and hardship, and increased life satisfaction. At the same time, CEIP produced significant improvements in participants’ social capital in ways that may provide a bridge to future employment, and the program’s effects on transferable skills were also significant, resulting in a potentially more employable workforce.

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The Future to Discover Early Implementation Report examines the project’s preliminary results. Implemented in 51 schools in the two provinces, FTD aims to help high school students develop an interest in post-secondary education, and increase their participation in such programs.

The program targets students from low-income families whose parents have little or no post-secondary experience, as research has shown that these students are significantly underrepresented in post-secondary institutions.

The first of a series of three publications reporting on FTD’s progress, the new report presents preliminary findings, looks at the project’s design and implementation, and analyzes the impacts on participants’ attitudes towards school, post-secondary learning, and the challenges — mental, social, and financial — the students face in accessing higher education.

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The Community Employment Innovation Project (CEIP) was introduced as a demonstration project to test an active re-employment strategy for unemployed individuals who volunteer to work on locally developed community projects in areas hit by chronic unemployment. In exchange for foregoing their Employment Insurance or Social Assistance benefits, CEIP offered participants wages to work on community projects for up to three years, giving them a significant period of stable income as well as an opportunity to gain work experience, acquire new skills, and expand their network of contacts.

In effect, the project provided communities with subsidized labour that could be put to productive use in fulfilling local needs. Indeed, communities were responsible for creating decision-making bodies and mobilizing project sponsors to develop projects that responded to these local needs.

The report provides a comprehensive analysis of the effects of CEIP on the communities that developed projects and on the unemployed who participated in these projects.

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The project, involving some 1,500 high school students in 18 B.C. schools, is actively testing interventions that address the fact that lack of academic engagement is often a barrier that prevents youth from proceeding to a post-secondary program after high school. The interventions prepare students for post-secondary studies by placing academically average students in advanced post-secondary preparatory classes while providing them with the skills and supports to achieve success with a curriculum based on writing, inquiry, collaboration and reading.

As shown in the BC AVID Early Implementation Report, released today, the project’s interventions aim to convert students from “passive learners” into active classroom contributors and critical thinkers. What makes the project unique in B.C. is that researchers will track participants’ outcomes against those of a comparison group to determine the effectiveness of the interventions and whether or not they improve rates of high-school graduation and post-secondary enrolment.

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Explore Your Horizons was implemented in Manitoba (where it was known as Future to Discover) and New Brunswick; Learning Accounts was implemented only in New Brunswick.

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This experimental approach — proposed by CIRANO and first reported in a previous paper by Johnson, Montmarquette, and Voyer (2010) — involved subjecting high school students to a series of decisions, some of which involved potentially high-stakes choices between various combinations of grants and loans for full-time PSE and significant but smaller amounts of cash. Our principal research question is to what extent are higher price sensitivity and loan aversion more prevalent and thus likely to act as barriers to PSE participation among under-represented groups?

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