{"id":310587,"date":"2025-10-17T11:25:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T11:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/310587\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T11:25:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T11:25:15","slug":"ottawa-puts-4-4m-into-saint-john-education-and-employment-program-for-youth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/310587\/","title":{"rendered":"Ottawa puts $4.4M into Saint John education and employment program for youth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christina Fowler talks about the kids who come to seek support from the Saint John Learning Exchange, hoods up over their heads, legs shaking and unsure of what to expect.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey slowly begin to believe in themselves because we believe in them,\u201d said Fowler, the Learning Exchange CEO. \u201cOne of my favourite moments is seeing that same youth, three months later, with their hood down, standing tall, confident and standing tall, ready to take on the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

This week at the Learning Exchange offices in Saint John, the federal government announced $4.4 million in funding for the READY program that provides wrap-around services for youth, aged 15 to 29, that need education, skills training and general support to find a good job and get a better start in life as young adults.<\/p>\n

Nickole Theriault, 18, said she was one of those kids \u201c with my hood up and my legs buckling, I was so scared.\u201d<\/p>\n

WATCH | Nickole Theriault shares the story of how program changed her life:\u00a0 :<\/strong>\"\"<\/p>\n

Education program for Saint John youth gets huge funding boost<\/p>\n

The Saint John Learning Exchange received $4.4 million in federal funding to scale up its services for youth, which include help in education, employment and mental health.<\/p>\n

She was in Grade 9 at the time at St. Malachy\u2019s High School in uptown Saint John and was being bullied and feeling a lot of pressure in the classroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese challenges left me feeling really discouraged and disconnected from the idea of pursuing an education,\u201d Theriault said.<\/p>\n

She dropped out and didn\u2019t return to school until she was 16 and started at the Learning Exchange, where she could do the coursework outside of the traditional classroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone here was so supportive and immediately invited me to start the work and do it at my own pace,\u201d Theriault said. \u201cI was able to get very, very high marks in my classes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AChristina Fowler says employers need the eager and engaged young people who graduated from the program. (Roger Cosman\/CBC)<\/p>\n

She also started working at Stone Soup Catering, a social enterprise that hires workers from the Learning Exchange, and began thinking about the university courses she would need to take to become a veterinarian, a long-term goal she\u2019s had for years.<\/p>\n

READY stands for Repairing Education and Employment Achievement Debts to Youth. It was already an active program, but the federal funding is allowing it to ramp up to serve 200 youth a year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Theriault herself was on the waitlist for the program, a common experience for many youth who end up there.<\/p>\n

The new money will create more spots and also help them expand their skills training components and connections to companies that could employ them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just had 13 young people graduate from the insulators trades training, and they’re all working full-time jobs now,\u201d Fowler said. \u201cWe’re pretty proud of the trades approach, the direct employment approach.\u201d<\/p>\n

The program also has \u201cwrap-around\u201d supports that help set them up for success. That could be anything from connections to mental health and addictions services.<\/p>\n

They also do a lot of project work so it teaches them how to be leaders and work in teams.<\/p>\n

For people like Theriault, it also meant help finding a place to live, setting up a bank account and getting proper ID.<\/p>\n

\u201c[We\u2019re providing] case management and coaching support so that they can get a job but can keep a job,\u201d Fowler said.<\/p>\n

The centre provides access to a variety of skills training, from the culinary arts to carpentry.<\/p>\n

\"AChris Miller says it\u2019s important to know how to ‘swing a hammer’ and bake a cupcake. ‘I think it’s valuable to have those skills.’ (Roger Cosman\/CBC)<\/p>\n

Chris Miller, a 17-year-old who was at Simonds High School before coming to the Learning Exchange, immersed himself in the culinary class and the carpentry course. He helped bake the cupcakes served at the announcement and made benches that are now part of the furniture at the Learning Exchange.<\/p>\n

He thinks a job in the trades could be in his future.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve always just thought about trades, they’re going to be really important in the near future,\u201d he said. \u201cI want that education for sure. You know, I want to be able to build my own house one day maybe and stuff like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he said it\u2019s important to know how to bake a cupcake and \u201cswing a hammer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it’s valuable to have those skills,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Like Theriault, Jessica Charlton was bullied in school. She dropped out of Harbourview High School in Grade 9.<\/p>\n

Charlton, 19, was a shy person overcoming an addiction problem when she came to the Learning Exchange and is now a confident young adult who has graduated and serves on the youth advisory council.<\/p>\n

She works with kids at the C.E. Nick Nicolle Community Centre in the city\u2019s north end and plans to go to university to become an educational assistant or support worker.<\/p>\n

\"AJessica Charlton works with kids at the C.E. Nick Nicolle Community Centre in the north end of Saint John. (Roger Cosman\/CBC)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt actually feels really good to be helping other people, because when I was like that, I didn’t really have the help at first, and that’s why I went down the wrong path,\u201d Charlton said.<\/p>\n

The focus of the program is on helping young people find rewarding work in a province with a 17 per cent youth unemployment rate.<\/p>\n

But Fowler said the province is also facing a worker shortage over the next decade and will need young, eager and engaged young people like Charlton, Theriault and Miller.<\/p>\n

Employers are “looking for the right fit, the right people,\u201d Fowler said. \u201cThey’re willing to give chances. They really need youth because that’s our workforce. That’s who is up and coming and we want them to be successful.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Christina Fowler talks about the kids who come to seek support from the Saint John Learning Exchange, hoods…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":310588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[64,420,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-310587","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-jobs","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115389263524364529","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}