When I first came to Canada, everyone was talking about volunteering. Mostly all my friends recommended me to volunteer. But why? I didn’t understand what was so important about it. I used to do a lot of volunteering back home before coming to Canada, however, it was not as emphasized as much as here.  

What is so important about volunteering?  

At Centre for Skills, for international women’s day, we decided to showcase the successes of some of the women who have taken our trades programs, and what better way to do this than to let everyone tell their own story. As such, this blog contains responses from a survey that has been completed by our graduates.  As much as we would have loved to display all of the great achievements of our participants, we could only pick a few responses to tell the story. Women from our programs are working in various fields throughout the trades, from construction, millwright, mechanics, and entrepreneurs.
 

Good advice can be difficult to find when you arrive in a new country, and sometimes hearing advice from many different people can get confusing! There can be so many opinions. What should newcomers do? Be cautious. Advice can be given with the best of intentions, but it can also be out-of-date and not fully informed. The first people you will ask for advice is of course people from your cultural community that have immigrated before you. Sometimes their advice can be quite useful, but don’t rely just on their advice alone, because your situation may not be the same as theirs was. What worked for them, may not work for you.