WHO: Centre for Aboriginal Human Resource Development

www.cahrd.org

WHAT: A community-driven, non-profit training and recruitment organization serving the Aboriginal community.

WHAT'S IN A NAME: In the beginning CAHRD wasn’t even CAHRD. Over its 34-year history, it’s operated under Native Pathfinders, Winnipeg Pathfinders, Native Employment Services, and Aboriginal Training and Employment Services of Manitoba. Only its focus has stayed the same: To help urban Aboriginals become employed.

WHERE: Winnipeg

WHEN: Since 1974

WHY: At first the organization was province-wide, an off-shoot of what was then known as the Canada Employment Centre. It soon became clear that those using the Centre were not being fully served. “One of the first things I realized,” Marileen Bartlett, CAHRD’s Executive Director, recalls, “is that the people that were coming in to use the service didn’t have any education or training.”  Things would have to change.

HOW: And so CAHRD start a small computer program. That worked so well they put in for more funding dollars which helped them deliver the first bank teller program. There was only one catch: graduates of the programs had to get jobs.  “We still continue to do that to this day,” says Bartlett. “We don’t do very many training programs unless we have a group of employers at the table with us who want them, who want to hire when it’s over.”

WHAT'S NEW: Thanks to the skilled labour shortage, one of CAHRD’s most popular programs is the apprentice carpentry course. “We have 14 carpenters who are graduating fairly soon and the union has already approached us and said, ‘We’ll take all those guys as soon as they’re done,’”Bartlett explains. “Because there’s such a demand.”

STATS: 77% of those who take training at CAHRD become employed or return to school, 53% of persons with disabilities, and 46% of youth become employed. Those figures are two times and, in some cases, more than twice the national average. “The hiring, of course, depends on our clients being successful in the training,” Bartlett stresses. “And we also try to look at training where there’s more than one successful exit.”

ENCORE: Bartlett can’t say it enough: “We want to do training, ‘quality’ training, where our people will get employed. There’s so many pluses right now for training Aboriginal people that I just don’t see a downside of putting in the resources that we need.”

FUTURE PLANS: Not only is CAHRD renovating a building that will allow them to do more onsite training but at the end of this month they’re starting construction on a housing unit that will accommodate 28 families when the next training season starts in September.