MEMBER PROFILE
MetroWorks like a charm MetroWorks supports job-seekers and employers at every step By Emily Bednarz ALL PHOTOS CONTRIBUTED
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he MetroWorks story begins over forty years ago. In the 1970s, the city of Halifax was concerned about the number of people living on social assistance. In 1977, the city launched a nonprofit organization to help educate, train, and find employment for this population. Since then, MetroWorks has continued to engage Nova Scotia’s labour force, pioneering a for-profit and non-profit hybrid business model that includes numerous social enterprises across the municipality. These social enterprises provide opportunities and resources for employment-seeking individuals. The EDGE and Options Work Activity Programs are designed to train youth. The Common Roots Urban Farm Program teaches participants about the joys of gardening, and the Mobile Food Market provides communities with access to fresh produce. The Stone Hearth Bakery and Stone Hearth Café provide meaningful experience in the food and customer service industries for participants who face barriers to employment. Across these programs and social enterprises, supporting individual growth is at the heart of MetroWorks. “There's lots of ways to address poverty, homelessness, and housing and food insecurities,” says Dave Rideout, President and CEO of MetroWorks. “But our focus is on personal capacity development. We use our social enterprises as venues for people to gain the employability skills they need to be able to move into the employment opportunities of their choice.”
Understanding barriers to employment MetroWorks supports employment-seeking people from all walks of life. “Typically, our clients are individuals with barriers to employment and that barrier could be anything,” says Rideout. “A lot of times, the barriers are navigation barriers. If you're housing insecure, food insecure, financially insecure, if 20
you don't have access to a computer or the internet, then navigating through systems is extremely difficult.” Individuals can also face barriers when changing career paths. “Other individuals in our program have been displaced from their work, or they could be leaving one sector and coming into a new sector. They just need an opportunity to rebuild or learn new skills,” says Rideout. From the outset, MetroWorks has championed inclusion in the workplace. “We were ingrained in inclusive work environments back in 1977,” says Lesley Dunn, Communications & Marketing Manager at MetroWorks. “We were already embracing people with disabilities and people from different ethnic backgrounds before inclusion became the buzzword. It was always a part of our everyday activities for us. It's a natural part of who we are and what we do.” Recently, MetroWorks has placed renewed focus on helping newcomers to Canada find employment. Many of these newcomers were highly skilled, and yet they were unable to find employment. “We had newcomers in the program that had double MBAs,” says Dunn. “I did an environmental scan, and I found out that for every thousand highly-skilled
FEBRUARY 2022
newcomers coming to the province, 15% of them were not getting employed and were ending up on income assistance.” This discovery stunned Dunn. “I didn’t understand why, if we have employers looking for these skills, these people are not just readily being brought into the work environment,” she says. The situation spoke to the level of unconscious bias employment-seeking individuals face in the workplace. Dunn recounts a recent conversation she had with a newcomer entrepreneur who has found success in Nova Scotia. “I asked him: ‘What do you think worked for you here?’ And he said: ‘I got rid of my accent from my home country.’” Dunn was mortified by this response. “We have the skills,” she reiterates. “We have an abundance of people who are ready to work. All we need to do is continue building relationships between ourselves, employment-bound individuals, and employers. We're here in the community to support them. Nobody has to do anything by themselves. You just have to stop working in silos.”
Recognizing privilege and educating employers MetroWorks is tirelessly dedicated to
