Our idea is to provide an incentive for high school students to work part-time while they're in school. To encourage students to not only graduate from school but also continue to work part-time we suggest a new award that high school students could graduate with, in addition to the Ontario Scholars award. The Employment Honors award would be given to every student who completes the minimum number of required hours at a paid part-time job while maintaining an 80% average. The top grade-12 performers from each level (open, locally developed, applied, and academic) would receive a grant for $500, as well as the seal of recognition on their diploma. The City of Oshawa would provide the diploma seals to successful students, as well as certificates of recognition to businesses who employed 2 or more students from the 9 schools.
A better approach: The aim of our initiative is to incentivize Oshawa’s youth to participate in pre- employment training activities and employability workshops by compensating them for their involvement. By focusing on paying these youths for their efforts, time, and skills, we can help them get an idea of their worth and what it is like to be involved in the labour market. With this enhancement of their self-worth and their skills through experiential learning, it has the significant potential to motivate them to join the labour force in Oshawa. This pilot program will provide our youth with the skills, qualities and experience that is valued by potential employers. Partnering with an organization like Durham College to provide these workshops and experiential placements provides the students with a wide variety of potential career pathways and access to reputable industry professionals and educators.
Our city idea lab is an extracurricular after school program targeted to students enrolled in high school, that takes the form of a workshop/seminar that has students playing games and doing activities with industry professionals. It is designed to introduce students to the various professions available in the workforce and it will teach them valuable life and transferrable skills. Additionally, it will act as a career building class, teaching students about resumes, employment, and money management. At the end of the program students will be awarded a certificate sought by that shows the students desire to join the workforce. Students will receive this certificate after attending all the workshops. The reason why we believe this will work is because youth will be given an opportunity to be at par or have an advantage over those who don’t attend or already have experience. This is the best solution for the city because it helps target the main demographic for youth and helps them find a job they might enjoy. Student can also use the program to improve and possibly network with potential employers. This also can benefit businesses going under because they can use this opportunity to market themselves and this can possibly result in an increase in both the labour and financial economy. When it comes to resources required in order to run our program. We would require approval from DDSB to run our program and facilities Furthermore, we would also require sponsors from businesses. To support our program. Sponsorships can be useful because it can help us increase our program reputation in front of large audiences who haven’t heard of our initiative. We would require aapprovals from high schools within the city of Oshawa. When we receive approval from high school (s) within Oshawa, we would require resources in order to run our initiative for example, projectors to run the program, students would be encouraged to take notes throughout the lectures. We would need the schools and sponsors in the area to be involved in this program to make is successful. The schools would need to give approval for the program to use a space in the school. The sponsors can be from big or small businesses in the community and would need to donate their time to run a 1-hour session.
Together as a team of Durham College students, we developed a proposed initiative for the City of Oshawa called ApprenTEENship. Our initiative is targeted to aid in youth unemployment. Mainly, our idea for ApprenTEENship is it is a city-wide job bank that is targeted towards youth, especially those with little to no job experience. Through our initiative the City of Oshawa could partner with local high schools in a program where students are able to get their required 40 hours of community involvement hours and employers get volunteered labour for 40 hours per student they take on. ApprenTEENship is a collaborative effort between The City of Oshawa, local businesses, and school boards/schools in the surrounding area(s). ApprenTEENship is a beneficial initiative for the students and employers of Oshawa. This will allow more rewarding and hands-on work experience to help develop the work skills of youth as well as give them more insight into being a part of the labor force. Overall, ApprenTEENship was created to be a resourceful initiative that could potentially benefit the City of Oshawa and increase youth employment.
The “Youth Helping Youth” initiative is mentorship program between the city of Oshawa’s Human Resource department and Durham College’s Human Resource program in hopes of aiding the high unemployment rate facing the youth demographic in Oshawa. Durham College’s Human Resource students will have the opportunity to be mentored by individuals from the City of Oshawa’s Human Resource department in hopes of gaining networking opportunities, industry insight, as well as hands-on experience while also aiding other Durham College students and alumni in the process. Thus, the “Youth Helping Youth” will give Human Resource students a chance to further utilize the skills and knowledge that they have learned throughout their post-secondary education, to not only prepare them for their future careers, but also through supporting other youth who are beginning their own job search or still struggling to find a career in their field.
Our proposed initiative is to help the youths of the City of Oshawa develop their resume and gain confidence in interviewing through an all-in-one training program. Lack of experience is one of the biggest factors in youth unemployment, but with our workshop, participants can build experience, practice hard and soft skills as well as prepare for interviews through practice. This will help them to mentally prepare the candidates for the real interview, as well as help fill in any certifications or training that might be missing from their resume. We wanted to provide a convenient and affordable solution to get young people working and gaining experience. With the City of Oshawa as our stakeholder we can use their name to help our program be recognized by an employer and increase the chances of an interview for those who have been certified by our program. In order to gain attraction, we would like the city of Oshawa to place a link to our site on the City’s official website, which will direct people to our site, showing our credibility. Another option would be surveys and questionnaires this would help us to be able to see who, what and how many individuals would be interested in our program and what they would like to see available to help them. Online marketing is another option in order to direct attention to our workshop, social media is a huge platform that we could use to our advantage in order to gain interest and allow young people to give their opinions and insight of what they would like help with. Our workshop is an inexpensive program that allows youths to prepare for the efforts in job hunting; through resume building, interview practice, we are hoping to boost confidence and help the youth of Oshawa prepare for the workforce.
Connecting employment services with high school students (watch video)
Our initiative to propose to the City of Oshawa is to implement unemployment services into Durham District and Catholic School Boards. By targeting high school students, we are beginning their development in the workforce early, creating a healthy relationship with working. These resources will be implemented through existing classes within the curriculum, such as Careers, and embedding the DRUHC website into the School Board’s websites. By having an easily accessible job portal with supporting resources, students and youths will feel more comfortable and encouraged to find jobs. By outreach to high school students, a large population of youths, we will begin to see the youth unemployment rate decline in Oshawa.
