British Columbia

The Reboot Plus Expansion program, led by Douglas College and PEERs Employment & Education Resources, aims to re-engage youth aged 17–24 who are at risk of not finishing high school or are unsure of their academic and career trajectories.

Food Processing Skills Canada (FPSC) launched the iFood360° pilot project to explore how SMEs with limited resources could use VIL technology to foster growth and enhance workforce skills.

Contact North implemented the Northern Entrepreneurs Accessing Training (NEAT) project to improve accessibility to skills training for Indigenous entrepreneurs and their employees.

In this project, Early Childhood Educators of British Columbia (ECEBC) sought to mitigate the risk of COVID-19, all the while promoting newer types of outdoor learning that specifically blended traditional Indigenous and Western knowledge systems.

The Skills Match—The Energy Fit project had the broad goal of addressing the skills gap in Canada’s energy industry by using innovative tools, namely virtual reality (VR) technology and an interactive website, to facilitate career transitions.

The FEED the North project, spearheaded by the Ocean Wise Conservation Association, targeted economic and environmental challenges in Nunavut, which were intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic and by climate change. This initiative aimed to merge traditional Inuit knowledge with Western science, enhancing sustainability in local fisheries and bridging Indigenous and Western environmental conservation methods.

In today’s labour market, employers value social and emotional skills (SES), such as adaptability, collaboration and creativity. While there are many programs in place to help individuals develop SES, they overwhelmingly target children and youth and face limitations due to observer bias and inaccurate self-assessments. To address these gaps, Futureworx developed the Employability Skills Assessment Tool (ESAT), an online tool that supports the assessment and development of SES.

The Hecate Strait Employment Development Society (HSEDS) developed WorkLabNorth, an online career development and training platform tailored to rural and remote communities in Northwest British Columbia.

The British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) is pleased to announce that researcher Dr. Moein Manbachi of the Smart Microgrid Applied Research Team (SMART) has been awarded $230,000 in funding from Future Skills Centre. This funding will support the expansion of the Virtualized Experiential Learning Platform (VELP), developed to meet the growing demand for skilled professionals in the green energy sector.