A group of Montreal high schoolers have launched their own employment agency for those many would otherwise call "un-hire-able".
17-year-olds Jackson Labell-Nevard and James Galbraith founded The Transition Project this past summer, for youths and adults who, for one reason or another, have trouble looking for work. What began as a school project has succeeded in finding dozens of Montrealers real jobs — 86 of them, and counting.
"We worked with people with all kinds of different barriers to entering the workforce," Labell-Nevard told CJAD 800's Andrew Carter. "Some people had language barriers, others had barriers that go as simple as not knowing how to engage in a search for employment."
Labell-Nevard says the first interview they conducted after launching the Transition Project was with a refugee from Nigeria. She was looking for manufacturing work, but didn't know the language, and didn't know how to go about finding work in Canada.
"It was very eye-opening to hear her story of how she had moved here along with her two kids, her husband was murdered," Labell-Nevard says. "An extremely sad story. And we actually ended up finding employment for her within a week. She was so grateful, it was really amazing."
Labell-Nevard says his organization has only recently applied for funding. For the first few months of its existence, they haven't needed funding — instead, they relied on teenage volunteers to make phone calls, knock on doors, and set up contacts with potential employers. During the summer, as many as 50 student volunteers were on the job.
Running a non-profit organization runs in Lavell-Nevard's family — his grandmother, Sheila 'Twinkle' Rudberg, co-founded LOVE: Leave Out Violence in 1993, after her husband was murdered by a 14-year-old boy during a botched robbery attempt. The group aims to keep marginalized youth away from violence through the arts and training programs.
"The fact that she started a non-profit was always an inspiration for me, and she really helped me in teaching me how to do it, how to reach out to people," Lavell-Nevard says. "Definitely an inspiration to me."
For more information, visit the Transition Project's web site.