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We believe in collaborating on projects that benefit our community. In the past we have done a number of exciting collaboration projects with individuals, non-profits, for-profit organizations, and government agencies across all sectors to strengthen our community.

Exploring Digital Solutions with Community for Settlement Outcomes

Using diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging and an intersectionality lens to build sustainable livelihood assets for Spanish-speaking Immigrants in Newfoundland and Labrador

This pilot project is about learning and exploring how we can better use digital technology to help address barriers that all immigrant communities face – lack of awareness of services and challenges navigating, connecting and using available resources to support their settlement goals.  It all boils down to ACCESSIBILITY for people and resources.

Our co-op members initiate projects that can benefit the community. Through our extensive research with immigrant women and their families between 2019 – 2024 we were reminded that connection and resource access challenges continue to exist for immigrants settling in our province.  It was time to explore with the community how we collectively use digital capacity to support immigrant communities.  We could have worked with any number of communities because they share many common settlement challenges.  But our champions from the Latin American community encouraged us to start with their community first and use the learning to benefit other immigrant communities.

We have no idea what digital solution or solutions might work for the community.  Services, informal groups and individuals invested in this diverse community all use digital in different ways.  The opportunity this project presents is for stakeholders to work together on digital solutions that can strengthen immigrant communities.

This project aims to facilitate the development and testing of a sustainable digital solution using a design team that reflects the Spanish-speaking immigrant community. While this project has used the word PLATFORM to describe a possible digital solution for community building and settlement resourcing, whatever the solution will be, it will be guided by the targeted community.  

Sustainability is a key consideration in this project.  So stakeholders interested in strengthening their digital capacity or using or integrating this digital solution for their use will be encouraged to get involved in the project.  Everyone is welcome.  

We hope that this initiative at the very least will support stakeholders to learn where our community is right now in terms of digital capacity use for settlement outcomes and the investment it takes to sustain it. But we hope that this pilot project can provide the community with new digital solutions and a playbook that can help other communities better support immigrant settlers to thrive.  

We appreciate the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador’s Office of Immigration and Multiculturalism for funding this small  pilot project and we thank our co-operative, partners and allies in the community for their in-kind contributions.

The Evidence for Community Employment Services Project

This research project explores how to improve data management systems to capture client progress toward employment/training and then inform best practices for future application. The project will do this by uncovering trends in client needs, highlighting interventions linked to the most positive outcomes and helping stakeholders create evidence-based refinements so future services may result in desired outcomes. Funding for this project is being provided by the Workforce Innovation Centre NL (WIC NL).

Click here to learn more about the project.

 

Her Own Boss!
Self Employment to Bridge Settlement and Economic Security

Her Own Boss! is a national action research project with the goal of increasing service providers’ understanding of the needs of newcomer women exploring self-employment.  This exciting project, delivered in St. John’s, NL,  Ottawa, ON and Vancouver, BC metro regions, provides free opportunities for Visible minority newcomer women to explore community resources. Collective Interchange is the delivery partner for the province of NL on this Women’s Economic Council (WEC) project.  We want to recognize the Multicultural Women’s Organization of Newfoundland and Labrador who is the local anchor organization.  Over a two year period, stakeholders will contribute to research while working together to pilot new resources that can better serve visible minority newcomer women.

 

Youth-Based Programs:

Collective Interchange likes to keep its finger on the pulse! We give youth opportunities to gain work experience giving them exclusive insight into the non-profit sector and co-operative business model. We encourage our youth during our time with us to advance their professional profile by encouraging resume building, providing professional mentoring, networking opportunities, and other career development activities. We continuously try to keep the ball rolling to inspire youth to consider future plans in education and work.

 

The Jigsaw Puzzle Project

The Jigsaw project resulted in the creation of an online resource called Weconomie.ca.  This community-owned portal equips women and nonprofit organizations with free and low-cost resources supporting entrepreneurship, social enterprise, and co-operatives.  This national project was lead by a collective of three women’s enterprises located in different Canadian provinces.  Collective Interchange partnered with a number of organizations in the St. John’s area to ensure that this province helped shape weconomie.ca.  Funding for this project was provided by Status of Women Canada and the Women’s Economic Council (WEC) engaged the Collective Interchange to champion and lead this project.

Click here to visit Weconomie

Click here to learn more about the project

 

Amplify

“AMPLIFY has the objective of providing employment for approximately 120 targeted youth who may have little work experience or who may face challenges in locating summer employment. It also offers 25 hours of career and employability enhancement learning opportunities.  AMPLIFY encourages opportunities for the participants to build networks, connect with peers and reach out to newcomers.”

Click here to visit the Community Sector Council website to learn more.

 

Linkages

Linkages is a government funded project that partners with non-profit community based agencies to provide youth with career and employment building sessions during a 26 week paid employment. Collective Interchange was given the opportunity to work with youth towards their career goals and to encourage further education. Our goal for the project was to inspire the youth to pursue returning to school to complete academic upgrading or post secondary, enter skills training, continued employment, or self-employment as  options to grow their careers and reach their future goals.

Click here to learn more about Linkages.

 

Cluster Project

The Cluster Project, previously known as Empowering Women’s Enterprises and Networks Cluster Project, was a National project that was delivered in 4 different regions of the country. Working in partnership with WISE (Women Interested in Successful Employment), we provided services to women who were business owners, and women exploring entrepreneurship. We used this project to empower women to achieve their business goals by providing education, training, leadership opportunities catered to their individual, business, and community goals. We have also connected women in the project to existing services in the province that would help them along the way to improve their business venture to further grow their business.

Click here to learn more about the Cluster Project