An initiative started in Windsor to attract young females to the skilled trades it taking its program Canada wide.
Build A Dream received a $728,000 grant from the Ministry of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion to bring its workshop based model to 5,000 high school girls across the county.
"Our main focus is to help young women make career informed decisions and by doing that we want to attract them to areas where women are significantly under-represented and there's a significant demand within the industry," said Nour Hachem-Fawaz, President and Founder of Build a Dream.
The grant will help the organization expand its staff, create more partnerships throughout Canada and expose young women to careers in skilled trades.
"Not only are we going to be able to provide more career discovery expos that invites parents and young women to learn about the trades but we're going to be able to provide more workshops that are hands-on so that young women can test out a trade to then truly make an informed decision," said Hachem-Fawaz.
It's estimated over 700,000 skilled trade workers will retire over the next eight years increasing demand for those positions. The aim of Build a Dream is to address that shortage by attracting more females to those jobs. According to the 2018 Registered Apprenticeship Information System, only nine per cent of Red Seal apprentices were women.